


The Home at the End of the Road

by R_W_Daniels



Series: Flying To Wyoming [6]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Apocalypse, Complete, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Family, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Lemon, Medical Procedures, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-09-02 11:02:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 92,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8665132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R_W_Daniels/pseuds/R_W_Daniels
Summary: The conclusion of Flying to Wyoming.
Joel and Ellie arrive in Jackson. Can they become the family that Ellie always hoped for? Or will the long shadow of Joel’s lie force her to leave another person she loves behind to continue her journey alone?
New updates throughout the holiday season until all four chapters are up!





	1. Yesterday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel and Ellie arrive in Jackson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is a continuation of my earlier work, Flying To Wyoming, volumes one and two, as well as three one-shots. It contains numerous references to those works. If you haven’t read those works yet, you should consider doing it so you’re up to speed and aren’t left wondering what Joel and Ellie are talking about when they reference things from the earlier chapters.

**“THE HOME AT THE END OF THE ROAD”**

**Chapter 01 – Yesterday**

 

A man and a girl come down from the steep, grassy hill and cross the small wooden bridge, walking towards the gates of the little town nestled in the mountains. In the days before the world fell down, the town had been a roadside speck, the kind of nothing and nowhere that people drove past on their way to more important places, passing by the cluster of houses without so much as a thought or a glance in their rearview mirror as the tiny, pointless community receded away in their wake, unimportant, unnoted, and quickly forgotten, just one more bit of colorful, local flavor to the eyes of tourists taking a break from the camping and hiking of the Grand Teton National park or the vast, primeval forest of nearby Yellowstone.

No tourists have driven past this little town for twenty years. There are no tourists any more. There are only survivors. The world has changed. This little nothing of a town has changed too. It is the cradle of a new civilization, a new world, waiting to be born. The people in the town believe this to be true. They are right, but not entirely for the reasons they suspect.

In days past, the name of the town was Kelly, Wyoming. Today, the inhabitants call it Jackson. People, outsiders, might hear rumors. They might come looking for the place where the old world still lives, a light carried through the engulfing darkness of the apocalypse like a guttering torch, flickering in the long night that swallowed the rest of the world. They might come searching for the priceless relics preserved so lovingly here: electricity, democracy, hot and cold running water. Let the outsiders search for it all they want. Let them come looking for Jackson. The signs along the cracked and busted highways winding through these mountains point the way clearly to Jackson, but there is only rust and decay there, a tourist town long ago gone to rot and ruin. That is the Jackson the world knows. The Jackson that was. This is the new Jackson. The Jackson that only these people know. Hidden in the mountains, a tiny town, insignificant until now, renamed in secret, protected at all costs, and soon to bear the seed of hope that will blossom across a world lain fallow for so long.

The town is surrounded by a wall, as all towns now must be, made of scrap metal assembled in haste and reinforced over time, as desperate hope turned into cautious optimism. Men in towers are watching them approach, the man and the girl. The men with the watchful eyes have guns. Everyone has guns now. The man crossing the bridge carefully keeps his hands away from his guns. The girl does likewise, following his lead. She has followed him a long way. The end of their journey is just ahead of them. There are the merest hint of tears shimmering in the corners of her eyes, unshed. No one sees them. The man is cautious. His eyes are on the men in the towers. The girl is heartbroken. Her eyes are on the trail. She cannot look at the man.

The man raises his hand in friendly greeting. He belongs here, even if the men in the towers don’t know it yet.

“Howdy,” the man says, trying to look friendly. “The name’s Joel. This here is Ellie.”

Ellie raises her hand too, but she doesn’t smile. She can’t. There’s no joy left in her. She searches the scraped clean, hollowed out remains of her soul but cannot find even a fake smile inside herself to wear. The trip from Boston is finally over. She didn’t save the world. She didn’t make a difference. She didn’t matter at all. It was all for nothing. There was no point to any of it. Everyone she cared for is dead and gone. All she has left is this man. He was a mystery to her for so much of the journey. And just when she thought she was beginning to understand him, now she finds she doesn’t know him at all.

She frowns, holds back tears, an awful truth eating away at the lining of her empty stomach.

_He lied. He lied to me._

Strolling slowly, in no hurry at all, as he nears the town wall, boots crushing the tall stalks of green spring grass, Joel speaks to the men in the tower nearest to the gate as though nothing is wrong, as though the world is still turning, and the trip across the country wasn’t a big waste of everyone’s time, and there are still things like love and friendship and kisses that open selfish hearts, and things still make some kind of sense and everything important isn’t just a big stupid lie.

“We’re lookin’ for my brother, Tommy, or his wife, Maria.”

_He fucking lied to me. After everything that happened. Everything I did for him. He lied._

A signal is given. The gates open. A few guards come out, rifles in their hands, though not pointed at the man and girl. The men in the towers keep watch as a few more people, bold and curious, step outside the safety of the gate. Soon more follow. A crowd forms.

Months have passed since the odd pairing of man and girl passed this way, but the people here have not forgotten them. They still speak of Joel’s action at the dam, the many lives he helped to save, the irreplaceable engineers who got to go home to their families that night because Joel is a fighter and this town needs fighters to protect the thinkers that keep the precious flame of knowledge lit against the unthinking violence that would snuff it out. They remember Ellie stealing a horse too, though that detail is the least noteworthy thing about her when they tell the story of that one remarkable day of bloodshed and revelation last fall. They’ve all heard about her.

Ellie.

The immune girl.

They’re afraid of her but try not to show it. They mean well. They’re curious. Repulsed too. They have questions. They want to press close, but at the same time instincts sharpened for self-preservation urge them to keep their distance. Cordyceps can destroy a community more thoroughly than any bandit attack. Joel forces a thin smile, chokes down a snarl, his hands limp but wanting to curl into hard fists, hammers of flesh and bone. He talks pleasantly, doing his best to appear affable. Ellie’s hand drifts towards her hip, towards her pocket, an innocent gesture. They have seen the grip of the pistol jutting out of her back pocket, but they don’t know about the knife in the other pocket. She doesn’t like being surrounded like this. Her heart begins to pound. Joel is trying his best to put up a friendly face, but the people have fenced him in without meaning to. Ellie and Joel have been away from civilization for a long time. Violence simmers inside them, a precaution brought about by necessity and experience. It will be a long time before they will feel at home here. Behind his amiable grin, Joel’s back teeth grind. Ellie hears a faint ringing in her ears, brought on by the rushing of her blood. She and Joel are encircled. There’s no escape. Violence rushes up inside her and these smiling people don’t see it. They’re been safe a long time. Tears well up. She is afraid of what she is about to do. It will be a reflex. She doesn’t want to do it but these people won’t stop crowding around her. She feels the hilt of the hidden knife with the edge of her thumb. Her hand is shaking. Why won’t they move back? Why won’t they just fucking move back a little? Joel’s forced smile begins to fade. He’ll be the first to hurt someone. Ellie waits for her cue, following his lead. If they would just move back a little. She slips her hand into her back pocket, feels her mom’s knife beneath her trembling fingers. A single tear escapes the corner of her eye. Tommy arrives on the run.

He calls Joel’s name. Joel smiles again, genuinely, in relief. The brothers hug. Ellie watches. She lets the tears spill down her cheeks, feeling too many things at once. Her chest aches with a pain she can’t precisely locate. She starts crying, softly, silently. She can’t stop. Joel wraps his arms around her. She doesn’t want him to. He says comforting words to her. She doesn’t want to hear them. Soundlessly, she lets him hold her while she weeps into his shirt. She doesn’t want to be here, surrounded by these strangers she doesn’t know, and wrapped up in the arms of Joel, the biggest stranger of all, but she has nowhere else to go.

 

* * *

 

“I wish things had gone differently,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“With the Fireflies,” he adds, to make sure she understands his point.

“Sure.”

“Just…” he continues with a slight shrug, searching for the words that will put this matter to rest and restore the peace and warmth between them, “wasn’t in the cards, I reckon.”

“Whatever you say, Joel.”

He lets the subject rest, just glad to be done with it. Things aren’t back to normal between them, but maybe this is the first step down that road. He stretches out on the old vinyl sofa in the living room of the trailer he shares with the girl.

In a pleather lounge chair across from the couch, Ellie stays silent. She hasn’t talked much since she woke up in the back of the truck this morning. He’s had to drag damn near every syllable out of her. She has a lot to deal with. Joel understands that. But he hopes she’ll be back to her old self soon. He misses the days when she talked all the time. He wonders why he ever wished for even a little bit of silence from this girl.

Tommy left to fetch the town doctor. He will be along soon and they can get the medical inspection out of the way. Tommy said that quarantine usually lasts forty-eight hours. Joel does his best to be patient. He knows that he and Ellie will have to spend a night or two in the quarantine pen, a gated, barbed wire fence just inside the town gate containing a pair of singlewide trailers. Joel and Ellie share one of the trailers. The town wall will keep them safe from the world outside. The barbed wire fence will keep the rest of the town safe from the two of them. It’s not intended to be a rude welcome, just a necessary one. Quarantine is a fact of life now, at least in the smart communities. God only knows if any of the dumb ones managed to survive this long.

For a moment, Joel can’t push the thought out of his mind that Tommy might not have enough sway to convince the people of Jackson to let Ellie stay. She is infected, after all, even if it seems to be just a technicality with her. Ellie’s immunity might not be enough to overcome these people’s fear of an outbreak of CBI within their walls.

He glowers and tries to think about something else. He doesn’t notice Ellie studying him discreetly from the corner of her vision.

_I can’t believe I cried in front of half the fucking town. Shit. I’m so stupid. Great first impression, Ellie. Now everyone here thinks you’re a big baby._

_Maybe I am a baby._

_But you’re a liar._

She frowns. Her mind keeps circling back to the same moment. She relives it, over and over. It’s stuck in her mind, like a splinter.

_Why did you lie to me, Joel? What are you covering up? What happened? What did you do? What the fuck did you do?_

She takes a deep breath, tries to force her mind to change the subject again.

She speaks as normally as she can. “So what’s next?”

“What do you mean?” he asks.

Ellie is glum. She shifts position in the chair. She resents having to explain herself. “I mean, what’s the plan? Like, long term?”

“Well, just take it one day at a time, ya know? If Jackson’s a good place as Tommy let on, maybe this is our long term plan.”

She nods and says nothing. Joel continues to talk, filling the silence the way she used to do.

“It’s been a hell of a trip kid. Me and you, we deserve a break. You know, they probably got hot water. I don’t know about you, but I sure could use a hot shower.”

Ellie nods again, without enthusiasm. “Yeah. Me too. It’s been a while.”

The trailer has running water. She tested all the knobs when she arrived. The water is lukewarm, not hot, but it is better than the cold river water beyond the town wall.

The trailer has vinyl furniture, not cloth. Tile floor, not carpet. Shower curtains over the windows instead of cloth ones. Easy to clean, easier to disinfect with antifungal solution. The mattresses are wrapped in plastic beneath the sheets. Whoever put this little quarantine station together had really covered all the bases.

The borrowed clothes she and Joel are wearing are among the few cloth items inside this trailer. Cloth can hide spores. And the spores can take root so easily.

She and Joel had to strip out of their clothes before they could come in here. The guards had rinsed them down with garden sprayers attached to old plastic jugs filled with a light amber liquid. She’d asked, what is this stuff? Water, vegetable oil, and baking soda, they’d told her. Kills fungus as fast as bleach does and it’s a lot easier on your skin than Clorox. One of the guards was a woman. She’d been the one to spray Ellie down and then rinse her off with another jug, this one filled with soapy water, in the three-sided plastic stall behind the privacy fence in the back of the trailer pen.

The woman had seen the bite mark on her arm. Tommy had told her that the girl was safe, despite what her eyes were telling her. The woman stayed as far away from Ellie as the range of the spray nozzle had permitted.

A knock on the door pulls Ellie back into the present.

A different woman enters now, the first guest they’ve had since they were ushered in here. A skinny man is right behind her. The woman is short, even shorter than Ellie, but quite a bit rounder. Her skin is almost the same warm shade of brown as Riley’s but her eyes are a strange, soapy gray-green that Ellie has never seen before. The man is tall, a few inches taller than Joel, but rail thin, like a cartoon scarecrow. Like the woman, he is dressed warmly in a long-sleeved, button up shirt and woolen vest. Spring comes in fits and starts up here in the mountains, but he wears a fuzzy, red and black scarf around his neck even though it’s not quite cold enough for something like that.

“You are the infected girl, yes?” he asks Ellie bluntly, his voice deep but somewhat brittle, like old ice. It’s the voice of an old man coming out of a younger man’s mouth.

He has a satchel, very similar to the one the woman has. The flap on his bag is open; the girl can see that it is full of medical supplies and tools. He’s ready to use them on Ellie. She quails a little at the sight of the devices and of him. He’s too gaunt. There’s something ‘off’ about him. Joel gets up from the sofa and eases closer to Ellie as discreetly as he can manage, which isn’t discrete at all because of the hard, uncompromising expression on his face. The armed men at the door tense.

The plump woman smiles and speaks in her friendliest tone. “This is Doctor Mark Copper. And I’m his pleasant bedside manner, Corinne Erasmus. I’d ask how you’re liking Jackson so far, but quarantine sucks the big one for everybody, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Ellie grins a little, relieved. She likes this woman.

The thin doctor sniffs discreetly but not from annoyance and not from amusement either. He is expressing or trying to express an emotion that Ellie can’t place. There was something very definitely odd about him. Joel and Ellie can both sense it. Joel tenses. People that squirrelly could do something dangerous or stupid or both at any moment, without any warning. Ellie, on the other hand, feels an unexpected sort of sympathy for him. There’s something about him that makes her think of the new arrivals at the orphanage, the little kids who actually grew up with at least one of their parents long enough to remember being part of a family before they were suddenly left all alone in the world. Kids like that usually had a hard time adjusting to their new lives. Ellie always tried to befriend them. Born an orphan, the hard life of a lonely child was easier for her. As she recalls, the older the orphan, the more they needed a friend – the dickheads that coped by becoming bullies didn’t count, of course. Dr. Copper seems like he is in dire need of a friend. Ellie decides she’s going to try and make a friend of him. He doesn’t seem like a bully or a psycho. He’s just weird and kind of a misfit. He’s Ellie’s kind of people.

“My name’s Ellie,” she says, holding out her hand to him, ready for a handshake.

Copper considers it for a moment and she wonders if it’s not because she’s infected that he’s hesitating, but maybe it’s because he has a hang up about touching other people or something. He almost smiles as he chooses to shakes her hand. She grins. She notices that Corinne is grinning too.

“Hello,” he says, only slightly uncomfortable in this impromptu moment of personal contact.

“Hi,” Ellie says. “Nice to meet you, doctor. Do you know a lot about cordyceps?”

“Not as much as I thought I did before you came along,” he says matter-of-factly. It makes Ellie laugh a little, which he doesn’t expect. He smiles, just a bit. It’s not something he does very often.

Ellie smiles back.

_This guy has the most perfect teeth I’ve ever seen._

**. . .**

 

The doctor speaks. “Certainly an old bite.”

“Yeah,” the girl says nervously. “Pretty much two years old now… I’m thinking about throwing a birthday party for it later.”

The nurse snorts a laugh. She likes this girl.

“Minimal signs of infection present at the point of invasion. Remarkable,” he adds.

“If you say so,” the girl says, not knowing what else to say.

Ellie sits on the edge of the bed in the trailer’s smaller bedroom. Joel had been in here just a few minutes before. They checked him out first. The mattress is still warm from where he had sat. She tries to draw a little strength from it to help her act cool. She’s not used to being naked in front of strangers. Joel was in here for just a few minutes, just long enough for a physical inspection to ensure he was free from the infection, before they released him and let him get dressed again in his borrowed clothes. Across town, everything they own is being inspected and washed in a steel barrel filled with boiling water. Joel is in the trailer’s living room now, talking with Tommy. Ellie doesn’t know it, but Tommy is doing his best to distract his older brother, whose eyes are worried sick and keep looking over at the hallway and the little bedroom back here. She can hear them talking, Tommy providing most of the words, about old times, the good days before the outbreak. Tommy is talking fast, his voice muffled by the walls. Joel barely speaks, and his voice is low, almost inaudible. In the back of her mind, Ellie is grateful that her pubic hair has had time to grow back before she got to Jackson and had to take her clothes off like this.

_Hate to have to explain that to the doctor._

“That was fine work you did,” Copper says, scribbling notes as Corinne carefully inspects Ellie’s fingertips, which makes the girl wish she’d used the fingernail clippers last time instead of just chewing them short.

“Huh?” Ellie says, looking up from the woman and her penlight.

“With the suturing,” Copper says, his eyes still on his big notepad.

“Joel says you’re the one who stitched him up,” Corinne says. “You did a good job with that. Lift your foot up, please.”

Ellie does, and the woman begins to study her feet, her toes, her nails. It’s weird and Ellie doesn’t like it. She feels like she’s being made to take an important test without studying first.

“Yeah,” Ellie says. Now that Corinne is done with her hands, Ellie covers her breasts.

_Don’t be a dipshit. These are doctors. Stop acting like a dumb kid. These two have seen everybody in town naked. It’s just your turn today, that’s all._

She takes a deep breath and places her hands on the mattress behind her butt. She decides to talk. Talking helps her cope with stress.

“I had a little training. Back in the Boston QZ. I was gonna be an army nurse when I turned sixteen. My mom was a nurse,” she says, thinking that maybe she’s saying too much but she’s the one who’s naked so she’s going to talk as much as she damn well pleases. “I never knew her. My mom, I mean. She died when I was born. But I was told she was a nurse. So I guess maybe that explains why I always wanted to be one too.”

“I wanted to be a nurse too,” Corinne says. “I was planning to go to nursing school after high school… but then the outbreak hit,” she sighed. “Still, I wound up being a nurse anyway. More or less.”

“That’s cool,” Ellie says, watching the kneeling woman inspect the spaces between her toes.

_So weird. But at least she’s not looking behind my ears or in my butt crack again._

“Who trained you?” Ellie asks.

“Fireflies,” Corinne answers, standing up, done with her inspection. “At first, I mean. Then I quit that group and worked for a clinic in the black market for a while. And when Dr. Rey put together this expedition to Wyoming, I came along. I figured any place had to offer a better future for me than Boston could.”

“You came from Boston?” Ellie asks. “Me too! Small world!”

“I’m from Port Elizabeth, originally,” Corinne says, scribbling notes into the small notepad she’d produced from her back pocket. “That’s in South Africa.”

“Wow,” Ellie enthuses. “ _Africa?_ How did you make it all the way to Boston?”

“British Airways,” Corinne grins. “This was back before the outbreak, when you could still get on a plane and fly anywhere you wanted.”

“Lucky,” Ellie sighs, a little jealously.

“Dad moved us to America when I was about your age,” she replies, closing her notepad.

“Neat. Did you like it here?”

“Yeah. America was… different…” the older woman answers, considering her words. “It was a little strange at first, but I liked this country. My father taught economics at a university in Boston. That’s how he knew Dr. Rey.”

“Who’s Dr. Rey?”

“Maria’s dad.”

“Ah! I haven’t met him yet.”

“You won’t,” Corinne informs her with a small shrug. “He passed about two years ago. Pneumonia. These mountains are cold and damp in the winter. Hard on the elderly.”

“Oh,” Ellie says, suddenly feeling sorry for Maria. It’s hard to lose a parent at any age. “I didn’t kno-”

“How did you stop the bleeding long enough to close the wound?” Copper asks, looking up from his notes. “It would have been rather severe, surely.”

“Joel’s wound?” Ellie asks, shifting mental gears quickly, and when he nods she continues, “Yeah. I used sugar. Joel always has a bunch of it. He makes smoke bombs with it, somehow. I don’t know how he does it, but I know where he keeps it. So I opened his baggie of sugar and sprinkled a bunch of it on the wounds, front and back and then duct taped a clean t-shirt over it. My favorite shirt. Only clean one I had. They told us in the nursing classes that people used to use sugar way back in the ancient times to dry up wounds. It sucks the water out of the blood or something.”

“That’s right,” Copper says with a small, approving nod. It makes Ellie smile a little. Praise from a doctor, even a small amount, makes her feel a real nurse for a moment. “Sugar is hygroscopic. It also stimulates new tissue to grow quickly to close the wound. And by removing the water, it limits the growth of bacteria and infection.”

“It still got infected,” Ellie says glumly, looking at the carpet. “But I was able to… find… some antibiotics. Penicillin. I boiled all the needles and everything, even the shirts and towels I cut up for bandages. And I changed the sugar dressing four times a day, until I ran out of sugar. But I kept giving him the antibiotics until I ran out of those too. I did the best I could. I didn’t know what else to do, you know?”

“You did good work, Ellie,” Corinne says, patting her hand.

“Yes. Very good work,” Dr. Copper says in his flat, unaffected way. “He’s only alive today because of your efforts.”

Ellie grins. These are real medical personnel. Maybe they’ll let her join the hospital team here. She offers more information, wanting to impress them. “I had a sports bottle with one of those pull-up squirty-spouts. I mixed some iodine and water in it and did my best to get as much of it into the wound as I could. I didn’t dig into the, uh, meat or anything. I was afraid I’d just make things worse. So there’s probably still some bits of metal or something in there. I think I got all the pieces of his shirt out though. I hope it’s okay inside there.”

“If there’s still anything inside, it clearly hasn’t harmed him. I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Corinne says.

“Joel’s too stubborn to die from something as ordinary as in infection,” Ellie says.

“There’s nothing ordinary about your infection,” Copper says, easily transitioning to the topic no one has brought up since she came into this room and got undressed. Ellie has no idea how impressed Corinne is with him. Talking is not Mark’s strong suit, but he’s in his element when he’s being a doctor. And Ellie is a very special case, bringing out people skills in Mark that Corinne never knew he possessed.

“That’s not what the Fireflies said,” Ellie responds sullenly.

“Oh?” Mark asks.

“They say I’m just the latest in a long line of immune people.”

“Oh?” Mark repeats.

“Dozens and dozens, apparently,” Ellie sighs with a defeated shrug.

“I didn’t know there were _any_ cases of immunity,” Corinne says to Mark, her voice low, her tone confidential.

Ellie answers. “Me neither. But I guess there are.” She shrugs and looks down at the floor again. Her feet are cold. She hopes she can get dressed soon. “I know it’s dumb… but I almost felt like I was… I don’t know. Useful. Like I could help or something.”

Mark kneels down in front of her, his hands folded across one knee. The expression on his face is so intent, so curious, that she forgets she’s naked in front of a man she doesn’t know. “What did they tell you? About your immunity? Anything you can remember, please.”

“You’d have to ask Joel,” she says, feeling uneasy, still wondering about Joel’s words in the truck, about the promise he’d made outside the town walls. She wonders if the Fireflies told him much of anything. She wonders if there’s more to it. Or less. She wants to know more about the Firefly hospital herself, but she dreads the knowledge of it too. “I was out cold the whole time I was there.”

“What?” Corinne makes a puzzled face.

“I fell into some water,” Ellie says, not wanting to talk about this, feeling her stomach knot up. She clutches at the edges of the sheet and frowns, her eyes on her crossed ankles. “I can’t swim. I almost drowned. The Fireflies… I’m not sure… they resuscitated me, I think. But I didn’t wake up. Then they took me to their hospital and they kept me under while they did the tests. That’s what Joel said happened. More or less. I don’t remember any of it until we were on the road back to Jackson and I woke up in the truck.”

“How long were you there?” Corinne asks.

Ellie feels like she’s being interrogated and she hates it.

”I don’t know,” she grumbles and looks around, not making eye contact. She uncrosses her ankles. Crosses them again. She doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be anywhere else than here no matter how safe it is, with people she doesn’t know but wants to like, answering questions about blanks she can’t fill in. Contradictions. The entire universe suddenly seems to be nothing but contradictions. “A day, I think. Not too long. They gave Joel an army rifle and a truck… that was his payment for hauling me across the country. They were supposed to pay him with a whole bunch of guns, but they didn’t. He said all they’d agree to give him was the gun and the truck. They didn’t even let me wake up long enough to get dressed. I was wearing that stupid hospital gown when I woke up in the backseat.”

“Mark?” Corinne says, something large and unspoken, hiding beneath that single word.

“Strange,” Dr. Copper says. He sees Ellie tense up. Her knuckles are white. Her toes are clenched and her shoulders are drawn in around her tucked chin. She’s looking at the watch on Corinne’s wrist. Mark doesn’t wear a watch; he keeps his in his shirt pocket instead. His shirt cuffs are buttoned snugly to his wrists. He nods to himself, making mental notes. “But these are the Fireflies we’re talking about, Corinne. Strange and secretive is the norm for them. Frankly, if they’d been thorough and polite with our guests here, then I’d have no end of suspicions.”

The girl relaxes a little as he speaks, he notices, and so he continues, talking to Ellie this time, trying to put her at ease.

“They were never the most patient organization. And the years have only made them more…” Not ‘desperate’, he thinks. Choose something better. “Hasty… in their efforts,” he nods, satisfied. “I’m not surprised they rushed their work with you, Ellie. The Fireflies are fixedly short-term in their thinking. They always have been.”

“My best friend was a Firefly,” Ellie adds, somewhat defensively. She wants to believe the doctor’s words. But she wants to challenge his argument too. She never gave much thought to the Fireflies, but Riley put all her hopes in them. She wants to believe Joel and the story he told her in the truck. She needs to believe Joel. But…

_I don’t._

“I was a Firefly too,” Corinne says. “But I know how they can be sometimes, Ellie. It’s not easy for them. Overworked and understaffed. _Always_ shorthanded. There isn’t much time to deliberate or debate in the Fireflies. That’s a luxury FEDRA has. In the Fireflies, you never have enough time or the right equipment or enough people to do the job, and you’re always under a lot of pressure from the bosses to produce quick results.”

“Yeah,” Ellie nods, willing to accept this. “But it would’ve been nice if they’d let me put on my pants before kicking me and Joel out.”

“Sweetie,” Corinne says, “you’re lucky they paid him at all. A lot of times, the Fireflies make promises of payment and then back out of the deal once they get what they want. We did that sometimes in Boston, especially with the smaller, weaker players. And outside the city, where we called the shots? We screwed people over all the time.”

“Really?” Ellie asks.

“Really,” Corinne says. “They must have a LOT of working trucks at that base for them to give one up like that, cause we treated the ones we had like they were made of solid gold.”

“Hmm,” Ellie says, thinking, falling into silence.

“Before the outbreak, some people consumed Cordyceps as a medicine,” Copper says out of the blue, trying to make small talk, trying to put the worried girl at ease. She’s nervous about something other than her nakedness now. Even he can see that.

“You’re shitting me,” she says wide-eyed, playing along, wanting to take her mind off her thoughts, wanting to talk as always.

“It makes for an excellent immunosuppressant for organ transplants. Also, some people believed it would improve stamina, virility, that sort of thing,” he says.

“Virility? Cordyceps gives you a boner?” she giggles.

“I didn’t put it exactly like _that_ ,” Copper says dryly, eliciting a giggle from Corinne. The women share a look and Copper sighs in defeat. Everyone in Jackson knows he is no good at small talk and now this new girl knows it too. He decides to lose himself in his work and ignore the world, like he usually does. “Perhaps you should take over the conversation from here, Corinne.”

“You’re doing fine, Mark,” Corinne says and squeezes his arm. Ellie takes note of the implied tenderness there. She wonders if Corinne is Copper’s shield, a protective barrier between him and the world. He seems like he might need it. He seems fragile.

Copper says nothing. He takes out a magnifying glass to look more closely at Ellie’s old bite scar. He holds out his other hand and Corinne places her pen light in it. He didn’t ask, she just knew what he wanted. Ellie takes note of that too. These two are a real team. It makes Ellie like them all the more.

_Always good to be part of a team._

 

* * *

 

“Ugh,” Ellie grunts unhappily. A week she’s been in this trailer. Two days for quarantine, that’s what they said. But the rules don’t apply to her. She’s infected. But is she infectious? That’s what the town council is debating. Tommy told her last night during his routine, brief visit that if it were solely up to Maria, Ellie would be out by now. But Jackson isn’t a dictatorship. And nobody wants a panic breaking out. Or a mob showing up outside the trailer.

“Won’t be too much longer,” Joel says from his place on the sofa. He’s reading an old ‘Auto Trader’ magazine, looking at pictures of classic cars that were offered up for sale decades ago, and daydreaming about the open road.

“Not like you have to stay cooped up in here,” she grumps. “They cleared _you_ already. A fucking _week_ ago. You could be slacking on Tommy’s couch right now, laying around and eating all his food, you lazy butt.”

“We’re in this together,” he says, pulling his legs up to make a place for her as she crosses the room to sit down beside him. They’re getting along better now. She seems a little happier about the prospect of a life in Jackson. He’s grateful for that.

“Yeah, I know,” she sighs, careful not to plop her bottom down on his socked feet, nestling against his flank instead. After a few moments, she hugs his knees and rests her head against them. “Thanks.”

“Mm hmm,” he says, turning the page. He pats her back lightly.

_What aren’t you telling me?_

“Feels weird to be so full,” she says, saying something safe, something other than what she really wants to say.

“Nice to be gettin’ hot food for every meal too,” Joel muses contentedly.

He sounds almost happy. It makes her heart, so heavy with guilt, lift for just a moment.

“Yep,” Ellie says, puffing out her belly and patting it with a happiness she only barely feels. “I can’t wait to find out what it’s like to be fat.”

Joel chuckles and turns the page. Jackson is nice. Nicer than anywhere she’s ever lived. But living isn’t so soft here than anybody is going to get fat anytime soon.

Ellie relaxes her stomach, becoming slim and small again. She sighs, momentarily content, like he is, and closes her eyes for a while.

_Why am I so afraid to ask?_

“You ready to be an uncle?” she asks instead, picking a safer topic. Maria is pregnant. Tommy knocked her up shortly after Joel and Ellie rode away from Jackson on a borrowed horse. She’s become quite large while Joel and Ellie were away.

“Ready or not,” Joel chuckles, “I’m gonna have to be.”

“Wish they’d come back and visit us again,” Ellie groans, stretching. “Tommy and Maria, y’know?”

“They will,” Joel answers. “Maybe later today. Or tomorrow.”

“I hope,” Ellie yawns. “I miss them.”

“I miss that apple pie they brought. Can’t figure out how those last two slices snuck out of the mini-fridge and vanished in the middle of the night like that.”

Ellie giggles. “It’s a mystery, all right.”

**. . .**

 

The ceiling isn’t strange to her anymore. This trailer almost feels like home. She lies in the top bunk, warm beneath her blanket, snug in a clean shirt and fresh underwear, still getting used to the notion of bathing every day, like she used to do back in Boston. The trailer is actually kind of nice, in a spartan way. There are leftovers in the little refrigerator and clean towels in the bathroom. The room is dark and the bed is soft enough. But she can’t sleep.

“Joel?” she whispers. “You awake?”

“What is it?” he asks from the bottom bunk.

“What if they won’t let us stay?”

“They will,” he says reassuringly, confident. “Tommy won’t let ‘em kick us out.”

“But it’s been days and days. What if they tell us we have to leave?”

“They won’t,” he repeats, the matter closed.

She sighs dramatically.

“You’ll see,” he tells her in that same tone of voice he uses whenever she wakes up from a bad dream and needs to be told that everything is going to be okay. She hates that tone as much as she cherishes it. “Things’ll work out.”

“Um…” she begins, letting it hang there, hoping he’ll read her mind and save her the embarrassment of asking. She’s worried. Can’t he tell?

“Somebody in here needin’ a quick hug?” he says, not teasing. Not too much, anyway.

She grins in darkness. “Yeah. You do, you big wuss.”

She slides out of the bed, dropping to the floor. She smiles as he reaches for her. Her voice is quiet. She is trying to be playful to hide how adrift she feels. “I knew _you_ needed a hug. I know how you are.”

He snorts good-naturedly. She darts inside his welcoming hands and slides under the covers with him. It is more contact with him than she has dared since they arrived here.

“Ellie,” he cautions, unsure this needs to be anything more than a reassuring hug. “You know we ought not do this kind of stuff. Not now that we’re here in Jackson.”

“C’mon,” she mutters. “I just want you to hold me for a little while. Just till I’m sleepy. Okay?”

“Alright,” he grunts, feeling her curl up on her side, spooning in, tucking close. “But just for a little while.”

“That’s what I said,” she snarks, wiggling back against him, trying to make an airtight seal of their bodies. Cozy, she yawns and sighs, content. She’s still angry with him every now and then, but she’s trying as hard as she can to not be.

Soon she is sound asleep. Joel lays in the darkness, listening to her breathe. He has traded his soul for this girl, damning the whole world maybe, just to give her however much life she can hold on to for however long she can. He exhales and tucks his head behind hers on the pillow. It was worth the cost.

**. . .**

 

She is out of the bed before he realizes that someone is knocking on the trailer door. She is already back under the covers in the top bunk when Tommy’s voice carries down hallway to him.

“Joel? You up?”

“Yeah,” Joel says, propping himself up on one elbow.

“You two decent?” Maria asks, coming down the hall towards the bedroom in her increasingly waddling, comic gait.

“Yeah,” Joel answers.

Tommy and Maria enter the room.

“Good morning, new residents of Jackson,” Maria says, hands crossed triumphantly across her bulging belly.

“They decided to let us stay?” Ellie asks from the top bunk. She tosses the sheets aside and sits up, letting her feet dangle off the side of the bed.

“Doc says you’re both safe,” Tommy says.

“He’s been saying that for three days,” Maria adds, irked. “But it took a while to convince the others on the town council that he knew what he was talking about.” She holds her hands up, shrugging. “Sorry to have kept you two locked up in here for so long, but I didn’t want to push the issue too hard and risk an outright veto of my decision. That would have left it up to a straight vote of the whole town and that could’ve got out of hand, you know. Raw, unfiltered democracy tends to be entirely emotional. Got to pick your battles wisely sometimes. I hope you understand.”

“I’m not infectious? You’re sure?” Ellie asks, drumming her hands against the frame of the bed above Joel, swinging her heels, trying to hide her anxiety and failing. This is a question she’s had for a long time now and she’s desperate to know, one way or the other.

“Nope. You’re clean,” Tommy said, oversimplifying the matter for expediency. “You’ll have to ask Copper for all the details. He told me, but that many big words can’t fit inside my head at the same time.” He winks when he says it.

“Oh man,” Ellie breathes, not moving, her head bowed, her eyes closed. “That’s… man, wow, that’s really good news.”

“You’ve got CBI,” Maria says, providing details Tommy left out. “But there’s something strange about your particular case. And whatever it is, you’ve got so little of it that you can’t pass it on to anyone else. Copper says you’d need ten times what you have in your blood stream to be even a mild threat to anyone. And there’s none in your saliva that he can find.”

Ellie smiles and wipes her eyes. It’s a weird kind of good news, to be sure, but good news all the same.

Tommy steps aside as Joel rises to his feet. “You two can pick out a place to live today. This town’s still got a few empty houses waitin’ for people to move in. Mostly on the east side. That’s the bad part of town. I figure you two’ll fit right in.”

“Hush, Tommy.” Maria pokes at him with a finger. “Jackson doesn’t have a bad part of town.”

Joel chuckles. Ellie sighs deeply, shuddering from deep inside her body, releasing a tension that she suddenly realizes she’s been carrying all her life.

_A home._

“That’s assuming you two want to share a place together,” Maria says, giving a wry, ‘one girl to another girl’ smile to Ellie.

Joel reaches up for Ellie to help her down from the top bunk. She stretches out her arms for him happily, putting her hands on his shoulders as he places his on her waist. She comes down to the floor weightlessly. She’ll never sleep in a bunk bed again. From now on, it’s only real, grown up beds for her.

“You bet we do,” Ellie says to Maria, too relieved at all this great news to be mad at Joel about anything for a while. She gives the mayor of Jackson a grateful hug for good measure.

“We sure do,” Joel nods.

 

* * *

 

“Should be a pretty quick fix. We’ve been tryin’ to keep all the empty ones in good shape. Makes it easier for new folks to settle in. We get those from time to time. Mostly from other groups we trust, like the Shoshone and the Arapaho over in Wind River. They come across travelers needin’ a home every now and then. We do a lot of trade with the tribes. Some ranchers too, up around Sarlida and Woods Crossing. Family-run outfits. Good people.”

Dinner at the ‘Governors Mansion’, as Joel calls it. Tommy is talking, speaking to Joel. Ellie is trying to listen. She’s also trying to follow the conversation going on between Maria and Dr. Copper. The brothers are talking about the house she and Joel picked out today. There are still a few empty places left in Jackson, so the house is free. Running water and electricity cost extra, of course. Single people, mostly bachelors, have to share space, living together; otherwise everyone would have their own place and the town wouldn’t fit inside the walls – without the wall, there wouldn’t be a town, not for very long, anyway. Only families get their own home in Jackson. Joel and Ellie are a family. Officially. Maria signed the paperwork herself when she let them out of quarantine.

_Family. Finally._

_Home. Finally._

Ellie tries not to think about it too much. She doesn’t want to cry at the dinner table in front of everyone. She remembers the house instead. It looked old, like everything in the world, but solid. It is a funny, almost chalk white color inside. Later, after they’ve moved in, Joel will tell her it has been ‘whitewashed’, which is a word she thought she knew, but didn’t, apparently. She will tell him that she thought ‘whitewashing’ is what FEDRA does with all the reports about local events that they broadcast out of the loudspeakers all over the QZ in the evenings. Joel will tell her she’s ‘goddamn right about that’, and she will shrug, confused. What else can she do? Words are weird sometimes.

_I like that house._

That house is going to be her future. The doctor and the mayor are talking about Ellie’s infection. That’s her future as well. Tommy and Joel are talking about gutters and roofing and chimneys and storm doors. They also say the word ‘caulk’ a bunch, which always sounds dirty the way it comes out of their Texan mouths. It’s hard to keep up with both conversations. Fortunately, they seem to be ignoring her. She is happy to let them. She pretends to eat, but discretely she eavesdrops.

“But only for one day? Don’t you think that’s a little quick?” Maria is asking. “Even for those clowns?”

“If we’ve got the tools, we can knock it out in an afternoon,” Joel says.

“The Fireflies are sloppy. If Corinne weren’t on clinic duty tonight, she could tell you all about that,” Dr. Copper answers. “There are only trace amounts present in her blood. I had to collect several samples before I had enough for proper study. Possibly, they failed to notice the subtle differences in the early stages of development.”

“Oh, we’ve got the tools. The lumber too, God knows. All you could ever need. So long as the sawmill is up and runnin’, we’ll never run out of wood to feed it.” Tommy.

“It’s weird that Marlene and the rest of her friends in Boston hadn’t heard about the other cases of immunity. Hell of a long way to send her just to find out the trip wasn’t necessary.” Maria.

“Your guys need help at the sawmill? I gotta earn my keep around here somehow, I reckon.” Joel.

“That is strange, I’ll admit. But Sergeant Parker says FEDRA is still monitoring the airwaves, especially for their dwindling remote and offshore assets. Using short wave radio from their hideout inside the Quarantine Zone was probably too dangerous for the Fireflies. I can only assume the cells operating inside Boston were relying on couriers and the like to maintain contact with the other enclaves. A dangerous, unreliable way to communicate, especially over such a great distance. Perhaps that accounts for the gaps in her knowledge at the time Marlene sent the girl out of the city?” Dr. Copper.

“What we really need are good construction crews, Joel. This town needs a lot of upkeep. Watchtowers, the perimeter wall, hell, even playground equipment. Somethin’ always needs repairin’ around here. And a lot of what went up at the start was put together by people with a lot of enthusiasm, but not a whole bunch of skill, if you follow me. A lot of ‘em were college boys, not too used to workin’ with their hands. They meant well… but…” Tommy.

“Maybe. It just seems…I don’t know.” Maria.

“Sure. I can do that. Been a while since I had the opportunity to build something that wasn’t a smugglin’ tunnel. Hell, it’ll be nice to have a hammer in my belt again.” Joel.

“I’ve begun a few experiments of my own. Just to satisfy my curiosity. Very likely, nothing will come of it. But all the same, I’m intrigued. And I would be remiss to let an opportunity like this to slip away. I was going to tell you earlier, but you weren’t in your office on either of the occasions when I dropped by.” Copper.

“You still remember how to swing one, right?” Tommy.

“I understand. You should have cleared this with me first, but I trust your judgment. Just don’t let the council get wind of it. God, no. If they find out you’re growing CBI cultures under your bed, there’ll be hell to pay… For both of us.” Maria.

“Gonna thump you with a hammer in a minute.” Joel.

“My closet, actually. Small, sealed trays on the shelves. Taped to prevent tampering or inadvertent dispersal. The closet door is locked, as is the door to my office. I assure you, I’m taking every precaution. Sanitation and containment protocols. Lots of bleach. Fungicide on all relevant surfaces. Gloves. Mask. Apron. Visor. Plastic sheeting everywhere.”

“Where can a fella pick up some tools around here?” Joel.

“I don’t like this, Mark. But I’ll allow it on my personal authority if you’re absolutely certain there’s no risk of outbreak. And I mean _zero_ risk. Are we clear on this?” Maria.

“The general store. But I can loan you some of my tools until you can afford to get some of your own.” Tommy.

“I would house the experiment outside the walls, if I could. But sadly, that would be problematic for a whole host of reasons. Chiefly, a new structure would have to be built. And that would lead to… questions.” Copper.

“Good. Finally my turn to freeload off you for a change.” Joel.

“Somebody would probably sneak out there in the middle of the night and set fire to it.” Maria.

“Sleep on a guy’s sofa just one time and he never let’s you live it down.” Tommy.

“Yes. Those were my thoughts exactly. As I said, I’ve minimized any possibility of accidental exposure. Even Corinne doesn’t have a key to that closet. However, from what I’m seeing in the fungal media, it may well be that, given this peculiarities of this particular strain, an outbreak from my lab would simply be impossible.” Copper.

“You crashed in my living room for two damn months, boy.” Joel.

“The cultures are still microscopic, of course. But even at this early stage, I think I’m beginning to detect anomalies on the sample slides. A more powerful microscope would be preferable.” Copper.

“So what do they use for money around here?” Joel.

“Anomalies?” Maria.

“Stamped chits. It’s a pretty simple system. You’ll see.” Tommy.

“Yes. The growth is much slower than normal strains and the structure of the sacs appear… different. Stunted, possibly. It will be a while before I know more. I need to examine the asci, after they’ve formed. Assuming they ever do, of course.” Copper.

“Are you assaultin’ my poor wife with big words, Doc? Careful now. She’s pregnant, you know.” Tommy.

“So how do you like Jackson now that you’ve actually seen some of it?” Maria.

“Ellie?” Joel.

“Ellie?” Maria.

“She okay?” Tommy.

“Hey, kiddo. You daydreamin’ at the dinner table?” Joel.

A familiar hand is on her shoulder. She doesn’t know how long it’s been there.

“Huh?” Ellie.

“Are you crying?” Maria asks gently from her place beside her husband, directly across from Ellie.

“N-no,” Ellie says defensively, wiping her cheek with her hand, surprised to find thin traces of hot tears there.

_Why am I crying?_

“You okay?” Joel asks in a way so caring and gentle that it makes her angry. He’s sitting to her left. She wants to get up and move somewhere else, maybe the living room. Maybe the back porch. She doesn’t though. She is a guest. She remains seated.

_When did I start crying?_

“I’m fine,” she snaps at the man beside her. “I… I just guess I’m not used to eating around so many people or something. It’s no big deal, okay?”

_What the fuck is wrong with me?_

“I know that feeling,” Dr. Copper says sympathetically from his chair at the end of the table, Ellie to his left, Maria to his right, clearly not as far away from everyone as he would like.

Ellie looks over at him. He’s not joking. His face is serious, comradely, certain that he’s sharing her misery.

“I almost always eat alone,” he says with a short, strained nod and a tight little smile.

“You’re not gonna cry too, are you?” Ellie asks, trying to smile, trying to tease. “It’ll be awkward if we both start bawling.”

Trying to be a good sport, Copper smiles thinly, showing his perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. “No offense to my fine hosts, but if I sit here making small talk for very much longer, I expect I’ll burst into tears too, yes.”

Ellie giggles and sniffles, wiping her nose with a napkin. The others relax, even Dr. Copper, to a degree. He adjusts the scarf around his neck and pokes at the food on his plate, a wan smile on his lips. Birds eat more than this man.

Maria is eating for two. She’s due to deliver in a couple of months, so she returns her attention to the food on her plate. Tommy pushes his plate next to his wife’s, shoveling onto it his remaining scalloped potatoes for her to eat. She smiles and pokes at the back of his hand with her fork. Scalloped potatoes are her favorite.

”You trying to fatten me up?” she chides.

“Did that when I forgot to pull out,” Tommy laughs.

“ _Guests_ , you asshole,” Maria grouses around a mouthful of cheesy potato slices. “We have _guests_. Don’t they teach you men manners down in Texas?”

“Joel?” Tommy smirks, looking to his brother.

“Manners are for the womenfolk,” Joel chuckles. He proves his point by picking up a green bean with his fingers and popping it into his mouth. Forks are for womenfolk too, apparently. “They gave up on teachin’ us men any manners a long time ago.”

“I can vouch for that,” Ellie snickers and elbows Joel gently. “Barnyard animals have better manners than this guy.”

Everyone shares a laugh. In a few minutes, Mark will excuse himself for the night, his tattered nerves at the limit of his endurance, overworked by this prolonged social engagement. But for this brief moment, the dining room is full of warmth and love and Ellie sits and eats and feels like part of a big family. The unspoken worries she had earlier vanish for a while and she smiles and tries to think of a good joke to tell.

_Maybe the one about the cannibals and the clown. That one got a big laugh back in the dorm._

 

* * *

 

A blister is forming on the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. She has never worked a broom for such a long time before. She’s put in more work today then she ever did when the instructors at the military school were punishing her. She has discovered that hard work is almost kind of fun when it’s something you’ve chosen to do. She sets the nylon-bristled broom down, resting the handle against the old, cracked paint of the hallway wall.

“Shit,” she groans, stretching her back. “Why the hell did we get such a big house?”

No one answers. She is alone in the two-story, three-bedroom house at the end of the last street in Jackson. The lawn is overgrown and Joel has arranged for some guy in town to bring his sheep through in a few days to trim the grass. The four houses between this one and the nearest neighbors stand empty. No next-door neighbors for them. Joel thought it might be for the best, having a little extra space. She agreed because she trusted his judgment. She doesn’t know the first damn thing about picking out a house.

_Is it because he hasn’t had neighbors in so long? Is he trying to avoid confrontations or something?_

_Or is it because I’m infected and he wants the people here to have some space to get used to me being around?_

_If that’s it then fuck them. I’m not infectious. Dr. Copper said so. Nobody needs to burn me like a witch._

_Fuck, we can just live down here at the end of the street and let everybody else fuck off if that’s what they want. Who needs neighbors anyway? And I can play my music as loud as I want and nobody can say shit about it._

Footsteps on the porch. A hand on the doorknob. She reaches for the pistol in her back pocket. It isn’t there. She left it lying on the dresser by her bed. Her knife is resting on the windowsill across from it. She registers that thought just as she remembers that she doesn’t need a gun. She’s home. She’s safe. That’s Joel down there.

“You home, kiddo?” he calls loudly as he enters the house.

_Home._

She smiles.

_Our home._

“I’m up here,” she responds, already trotting to the top of the staircase.

“Got us some groceries,” he says, unloading the contents of an old canvas bag onto the scratched, battered kitchen table. Next week or the week after, he’s going to teach her how to ‘wet sand’ the table until it’s smooth enough to apply a homemade varnish. Then they can start scraping and painting the interior walls. This place is a real ‘fixer upper’, or so he says. There’s lots to keep him busy here. He’s happy. Happier than she’s ever seen him.

“Your shoes better be sitting by the door,” she warns as she comes down the stairs. “I just spent all morning sweeping these fucking floors.”

She enters the kitchen. He’s still wearing his boots, but she wants to hug him anyway. She was mad at him earlier, for no reason she wanted to talk about. She’s mad at him a lot lately, still struggling to live with the lie she knows he told her, even if he won’t admit it, even if she won’t call him on it. This is their home, the first real home she’s ever had, and she wants this new life to work. She wants to have a place to belong, the kind of place like Riley used to tell her about, when Riley still had her mom and dad. She’s going to make this work, no matter what Joel did.

_Let sleeping dogs lie, as he likes to say._

“What’d you get?” she asks, determined to be happy.

“A little bit of everything,” Joel says, pulling out canned food, cleaning supplies, basic seasonings. It’s not much, really, but what there is on the table is very diverse. “Tommy and Maria loaned us some money and got us a line of credit at the general store. I start work with the repair crew tomorrow, so we can start payin’ ‘em back soon. Don’t like being in debt to anybody, yeah?”

“What about me?” Ellie asks, studying the small blue drum of salt. A girl in a yellow rain slicker is on the wrapper. “Did Dr. Copper say anything yet?”

Joel stops working. He places his hands on the edge of the table and collects his thoughts.

“He said no?” Ellie asks, disappointed. “Why not? I’m _fifteen_ for fuck’s sake.”

“Actually,” Joel begins, “Doc Copper said yes. It’s the other people in town that said no.”

“Why? What the fuck for?” Ellie protests. “I’ve got _training!_ I saved you! Fuck, he said I did really good work!”

“The other people…” Joel says, searching for some way to put it that won’t hurt her feelings too much, “they’re not too crazy about the idea… They don’t… they don’t like the notion of you workin’ in the hospital.”

“Cause I’m _infected_ ,” Ellie spits out. “Is that it?”

“Yeah,” Joel says, reaching out with one hand in case she needs to be pulled in for a hug.

“Fuck those guys,” she says unmoving, her fists balled at her sides. “I’m not a threat. Dr. Copper said so!”

Joel steps closer and embraces her. She doesn’t return it right away. She just stands and sniffles and tries not to cry. She keeps her fists pressed against the outside of her thighs. She knows she’ll hit him if she doesn’t keep her hands down. She wants to hit him. She wants answers. She wants to _know_.

“I wanted to help,” she says accusingly, her voice sharp and high with the strain of trying to hold too much back. She whispers into his chest huskily, “I just want to _help_ , Joel. That’s all. Why won’t any of you people let me help?”

“We’ll figure somethin’ out,” he says soothingly, pretending the accusing words are not aimed at him.

She wraps her arms around him, holding him as he holds her. She starts to weep.

“Will we?” she asks, not wanting to cry, not wanting to be so angry with him, not wanting to have ever been bitten in the first damn place.

In their little kitchen, safe in his arms, she begins to sob, her body shaking with it.

There’s more to this that just the nursing job she didn’t get. Joel knows that. But he hangs on to the lie so that he can hang on to the girl. Like most decisions he’s made in life, it can’t be undone. You have to carry the weight of your choices forever. You do whatever you have to do for the people you love and then you let them hate you for it. That’s just how it is.

 

* * *

 

Corinne swabs the blisters around Ellie’s old bite wound.

_At least she’s not scraping it, like last time._

“What stinks in here?” Ellie asks, sniffing the air.

“Malt extract,” Corinne answers, carefully dipping the swab into a diminutive glass vial, three-quarters filled with a clear, amber fluid.

“Malt? Like beer?”

“Sort of, yes.” Corinne screws the lid closed on the vial and holds it up with slender, brown fingers for Ellie to see. “We use it to make this solution. See?”

“You’re making _beer_ from me? Cool! Can we call it EllieBrau?”

Corinne laughs and Ellie grins impishly. Laughter is the best gift you can give someone. For a moment, the glum girl is gone. The old Ellie is back, just for a few minutes.

“It’s a low pH broth that we can use for procedures like this. Molds and yeasts grow really well in it. It only takes a few days before we have a useable sample to study,” Corinne explains. Normally she wouldn’t bother the patient with technical details. Most people don’t really want to know all the things that are going on inside their bodies, despite what they say to their doctors. But this girl is different. She was training to be a nurse just a year ago, so she knows some of the jargon. She’s also relentlessly curious, even about the incredibly icky, perfectly natural processes of the human body. “It’s sterile and easy to make. But there’s a little more to it than just a bottle of beer.”

“I want my face to be on the label! And be sure put little umlauts over the ‘u’ in ‘EllieBrau’ _._ Both the ‘Es’ too _._ Lots and lots of umlauts in ËlliëBraü! Those little dots kick ass!”

 

* * *

 

Maria’s garden has many flowers. A rustic trellis fashioned from green saplings fastened together with garden twine sports a lovely mixture of white and purple blossoms. Tommy made the framework for his wife.

_I want one of these things. It’s really pretty._

Ellie runs her fingers along it. She can feel the love that was woven into its construction. She wants to be loved like that. She knows she could have it, if she would just forgive Joel for his lie. She sighs. No one hears her.

The brothers are relaxing in the backyard, having spent the morning successfully recovering the Firefly truck Joel had driven up from Utah. It hadn’t taken much to get it going again: just a hose and some tape. As they drove it up to the gate, Joel said he was donating it to the town as an act of goodwill. His generosity had not gone unnoticed by the townsfolk. Even Tommy was surprised by the display of charity. Generosity had never been his big brother’s defining trait.

Ellie wanders the shaded edges of the yard, wanting to be alone, but wanting to be near the brothers too. Joel practically had to drag her out of the house. Now she skulks about at the social periphery, pouting, wanting to be ignored and upset that they seem to be ignoring her. Nearby, Tommy is grilling meat while Joel supervises. The brothers are hashing out a rough plan to travel into Idaho Falls for supplies when summer gets here in full.

Tommy says, “Copper keeps askin’ for a workin’ power supply. The x-ray room has been down since last November. We’ve been puttin’ it off for a while, but with his new science project, he says he really needs one. Never seen him so excited like this. Not that it’s easy to spot, I’ll admit. But it’s what passes for enthusiasm from him, I’m pretty sure.”

“You got an x-ray machine in town? But that took a lot of work to haul up this mountain,” Joel responds, impressed.

“Built one,” Tommy says proudly. “Turns out they’re not all that hard to make. Most of the parts you need you can find in just about any hardware store.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“Nope. I was surprised too. Figured you’d have to be a nuclear scientist or something. Turns out all you need is an electrician and a good welder. You don’t even need lead. Thick, solid concrete will do.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“We found a book that showed us how to make the glass plates for the pictures too. Film’s gettin’ tough to come by and it ain’t reusable like the glass is. The only thing that’s hard to find is the tube that makes the x-rays. Looks sort of like a big vacuum tube. We swiped a bunch from a hospital, so we’re good on those for years to come. But the power supply it uses is real particular. It needs a helluva lot of DC. 20,000 volts, I think Doc said. We need to scrounge up a couple of them next time we go on a run. Ain’t like they’re makin’ new ones, and I doubt anybody in these parts has any use for any layin’ around the hospital. Either we find ‘em and put ‘em to use, or they just rust away, yeah?”

“I wish I knew you had a doctor that knew about this cordyceps stuff. Me and Ellie would’ve never rode all the way to Salt Lake City,” Joel says, looking in Ellie’s direction, smiling, hoping this opening will get her to engage in conversation today. She ignores him, making a big show of not noticing the men talking about her.

“Didn’t know he did,” Tommy says. “Doc never said a word about it until that day you two rode through here. After you took off, Maria told Copper about Ellie bein’ immune and all. That’s when he mentioned that he used to be part of the CDC down in Albuquerque, before it fell.”

“It fell pretty fast, as I recall.”

“That’s what he says too. Said that FEMA firebombed the facility before the riots could wreck the place up and let all those samples spread.”

“So how’d he wind up in Jackson?”

“‘Bout three years ago, we were making regular runs to Casper for supplies. He was hiding out there, apparently, holed up in the break room of an old WalMart. On our fourth or fifth trip, we’re conversin’, loadin’ up the flatbed, keepin’ an eye out for bandits, and this dirty, long-haired fella just walks out to us and says he’s been watchin’ us come and go and we seem like decent people and can we maybe use a good doctor?”

“Goddamn, son. He’s lucky you didn’t shoot him.”

“You don’t know the half of it! I tell you, Joel, you wouldn’t’ve recognized him. Even skinnier than he is now. I don’t think he’d spoken to another human soul in years. Damn ZZ Top beard down to his belt. Couldn’t see his eyes behind all that dirty hair. We’re thinkin’ he’s either nuts or he’s the bait for some kind of trap. Then he tells us he’s an ‘osteopathic physician’ with ‘a significant amount of experience’ and a ‘not inconsiderate intellect’.” Tommy shakes his head at the memory, smiling faintly. “Damnedest thing I ever saw. Figure he had to be on the level though. Who the hell else but a genuine real doctor would know the word ‘osteopathic’, yeah?”

Joel chuckles. “The fidgety scarecrow just walked up to your crew like that? Did he piss his pants when he did it?”

Ellie frowns, her brow furrowed. Mark Copper is her friend. The kind of friend who never lies to you.

_Don’t talk about him like that. He’s been through… well, a lot, whatever it was._

She’d say something, but how can you keep ignoring a conversation if you join in?

“Damn near. Took him about a dozen tries at each sentence before he could spit it all out. He had stockpiled a bunch of medicine and books and stuff. Had it all piled up in the women’s restroom. Filled up the sink and the stalls. We loaded it all up and brought him back here to Jackson. He’s pretty much been in that office of his ever since. If Corinne didn’t drag him out of there every once and a while, I think he’d seal himself inside and just talk to everybody through a little window, like those old check-cashing places.”

Joel chuckles. Ellie doesn’t like it.

“You shouldn’t make fun of him,” Ellie says suddenly, her voice clear and strong. “He can’t help how he is. He’s trying as hard as he can.”

The brothers look at her, measure her expression, reconsider their words.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Joel says, apologizing without actually apologizing. He takes a sip from his mug of local beer and turns his attention back to his brother. “So he was in the ABQ when it fell apart. And then… what? Twenty years later, he just shows up in Casper? Just like that? Where was he in the meantime?”

“No idea. He never talks about it. You can’t even ask him about those years. He’ll ignore you, like you didn’t say anything. If you ask again, he excuses himself all polite and stuff, and leaves.” Tommy takes a swig of beer. “We’ve all learned to let that sleepin’ dog lie.”

Joel mulls this over. “For a regular doctor, he seems to know a lot about cordyceps. That his specialty or somethin’?”

“Nope. He told me he was originally an endocrinologist.”

“What’s that?”

Ellie knows, though she doesn’t say. She’s returned to eavesdropping. This is their conversation, not hers.

_A doctor who works on the organs that make hormones._

“No idea,” Tommy shrugs. “He said he was recruited by FEMA during the outbreak. Whatever it was he was he did before, they gave him a crash course in the mushroom sciences, I reckon.”

Joel takes another sip. “He was one of the guys working on a cure?”

“Don’t know. I don’t think so. He won’t talk about what he did exactly. That’s another thing that’ll get him to clam up every time. Everything about his life before he showed up in Casper is pretty much a mystery. Hell, I think he only mentioned he was ever in ABQ just a time or two, now that I think about it.”

Ellie has wandered closer. “ABQ? What’s that? Like FEMA or FEDRA or something?” she asks.

“Nickname for Albuquerque,” Joel explains, pleased that she’s taking part in the conversation. He had deliberately tried to make an opening for her without being showy about it. He didn’t want to spook her by being too direct with an invitation to join in. He knows she’s fond of Doctor Copper. “Hey, Anthony was from there, wasn’t he?”

Tommy nods. “Yeah. Hell, Joel. I ain’t thought about Anthony in years… If ever I met a dyed in the wool, genuine authentic, cold-blooded killer, it was that guy.”

“Remember that big truck full of guns he had when we met him?”

“Yep. I never asked him where he got them all.”

“Me neither.”

“Pretty nice guy for a psycho.”

“You had a psycho in your group?” Ellie asks. She remains curious about Joel’s past, even if she’s still mad at him.

“More than one,” Joel admits, not unhappily. “But the good kind of psychos. The kind you need in a fight.”

Tommy grins, suddenly remembering something. “Remember him and Kelly humpin’ in his truck when the Air Force bombed the hell out of Houston? Jesus Christ, was Montalvo ever pissed off about that.”

“I sure do. I think it was all the explosions that got him in the mood. Won’t lie to you, little brother: the really big ones they dropped at the end? The whatchamacallems. Thermobarics? Kind of got a chubby myself.”

The brothers laugh. Ellie doesn’t.

_Maybe you just had to be there._

Joel lets the laughter slip away with a wistful sigh. He swallows the last of his beer. “Tommy… You were right about La Grange, you know. We shoulda never left it. We had it real good there, just like you said. Been meanin’ to tell you that.”

Tommy cocks his head, studies his older brother. Joel isn’t given to moment like this. First the gift of the truck, and now this.

Tommy nods appreciatively. Ellie expects more. She wants words, sincerity, forgiveness, acknowledgement, hugs, _something_. But that’s not how it is with these too. A nod is enough for them somehow.

_There’s just something weird in the water down in Texas that makes them turn out this way, I guess._

“I’m home!” Maria says from inside the house.

Ellie is starved for some female companionship. She can never be entirely sure, but the world of men is either too simple or too complicated for her to deal with sometimes. Only women truly make sense to her.

“Maria!” she shouts and runs inside to greet her friend.

Joel and Tommy watch her go. For a moment, the girl is happy again.

“She’s gonna be okay, Joel. She just needs time to deal with everything that happened. Lots of stuff all tangled up inside her. You know how it is. Nothin’s ever easy with teenage girls.”

Joel nods and says nothing.

 

* * *

 

Joel works all day. Some nights he has watchtower duty too. Ellie doesn’t have a job yet. At her age, most kids in town are working for their parents or alongside a relative or family friend, laboring part-time, learning a trade or helping with chores in exchange for an allowance. Ellie wants to work but no one will hire her. No one says it, but she knows it’s because of the bite on her arm. She treats the old wound every day with apple cider vinegar. Corinne suggested it. A nice lady on the other side of the little town, Mrs. Hauser, provides the sour, pungent stuff to Joel for a small fee. The blisters around the bite mark are already beginning to shrink a little. Soon they’ll be reduced to tiny white dots. Maybe one day they’ll be gone altogether and only the scar will remain, fading from red to silvery pink, like any other old scar. It gives her hope that maybe she won’t always be marked as a freak.

She sits in her room most of the time. Keeping the house clean was a lot of work at first. But she finally has it in shape, and now it’s just daily maintenance, the work of an hour or two. It doesn’t get very messy with only her here and Joel gone most of the time. Her bedroom is small compared to his, but it’s larger than the room she shared with Riley. She misses her long-gone friend. She’s lonely. She has too much time to think. Tommy is as busy as Joel. She sees even less of Maria, who has a whole town to run, plus she’s going to have that baby in a month or so. Ellie is lonely. She wants somebody to talk to. She talks to Joel less and less, even when he’s around. She wants answers but she’s afraid of what he’ll say if she asks. Another lie? Or maybe the truth? And would that be worse than the lie?

She sighs and lays back on her bed. It’s the middle of the day. She closes her eyes, listless and bored and depressed. She’s sleeping too much lately. She knows she’ll have a headache when she wakes up. She’s not even tired. She doesn’t care. She needs to kill time. She’ll take yet another nap after this one. Joel will wake her up for dinner. Then he’ll talk and she’ll pretend to listen and then it will be dark and time for bed.

 

* * *

 

The summer is hot. The town agrees to fund a supply run to Idaho Falls. The work is dangerous and those who go will be paid well. Joel and Tommy both sign up, along with Sergeant Parker, Kim, the town’s best scout, and several other men as well a few of the women.

They will ride out in a small convoy of eclectically outfitted trucks. Joel tells her that trucks like these are called ‘technicals’, which is how the ex-soldiers Anthony and Big Matt had referred to them. Each one is carefully fitted for trouble, with old bullet-proof vests scavenged from old cop cars stuffed inside the doors, and thick steel bars with wire mesh screens fitted over the windows, just the way Original Matt used to modify his truck, or so Tommy tells her. The beds of each truck are lined along the inner walls with sandbags, turning the inside into a bulletproof box, safe for cargo or a sniper. Maria tells her that Tommy showed the people here how to make trucks like these back when they were in Boston, before they set out on their journey across America. Tommy has plenty of experience, the kind the college students and professors that made up the majority of her father’s expedition didn’t have. Tommy knows all about the roads and how to survive them. He and his big brother used to be part of a convoy of such vehicles, rolling across a lawless America, going where they pleased and taking what they wanted.

Ellie isn’t allowed to go to Idaho Falls. Town rules say people less than sixteen years old must stay inside the walls; no outside work of any kind allowed. Tommy snuck her out with them when he and Joel took one of the big six-wheeled wreckers down the mountain, to the little bridge to get the old El Camino, which now sits in Joel’s backyard, and which Ellie insists is actually her truck. Working vehicles are priceless, but there was still hell to pay for the three of them when they got back to town, Ellie at the wheel of the recovered truck, queen of the highway once more. Rules are rules, and even the mayor’s husband has to follow them. Tommy and Joel each had to pay a sizeable fine to the city for the violation. Neither of them was going to make that mistake again. Ellie has to stay behind this time.

She stands at the town gate and watches them go, sick to her stomach. She can’t imagine how worried Maria must be. Standing next to the teenage girl, the mayor of Jackson stands unwavering and resolute. Unlike Ellie, there are no tears on Maria’s cheeks. The leader of this community can’t cry. She can shout and bark and bargain and demand, but she cannot cry. She clutches Ellie’s hand with a death grip. The girl can feel the woman’s hand trembling, but Maria doesn’t cry. She has to be strong for every person gathered at the gates, watching their friends and loved ones driving away. Ellie has no such demands placed on her. She cries. It’s not like she hasn’t cried in front of the town gates before.

 

* * *

 

It’s raining. Ellie stands at the big living room window and watches Joel hurrying down the street, a bag of tools he borrowed from Tommy in his hand. She opens the front door for him and he dashes inside, dripping water. The cold, damp air following in his wake chills her. She’s wearing her old gray shorts and a new green tank top. Maria bought it for her. Maria thought she needed more than just three shirts. Ellie isn’t bothered by her limited wardrobe, but it seems important to Maria, so the girl accepts the gifts graciously whenever they arrive. She owns more clothes than she ever has before.

“Comin’ down in buckets this mornin’,” he says, peeling off his soaked flannel shirt. “Just blew in out of nowhere.”

“Yeah,” she says quietly, already halfway to the couch, her back to him. Joel has been back for days. It’s safe to be mad at him again. “Take off your boots, okay?”

“Chandler said it might rain today. He swears his bad knee can predict the weather. Looks like he was right.” He’s trying hard to have a conversation with her. He’s been trying hard to connect with her ever since he got back from Idaho Falls. Joel doesn’t give up easily. “He gave us all the rest of the day off, since it seems like it’s gonna keep on doin’ this shit.”

“Uh huh,” she replies, looking at the rain pouring down outside the big window. She pulls her legs up and holds her feet with fretting fingers. Her nervous hands betray the mask of impassiveness that she wears so often these days.

He sits down in the recliner at the other edge of the coffee table, making sure to let her have her space on the sofa, and begins pulling his boots off.

“Somethin’ botherin’ you today, Ellie? This rain got you feelin’ blue maybe?” he asks.

Something’s bothering you every day, he thinks to himself.

“No, I’m fine,” she lies.

“All right then,” he lies.

 

* * *

 

The X-ray machine is working again. The visit to Idaho Falls had been successful. Two men wounded. Three truckloads of supplies brought back. Worth the cost, Maria had insisted. Ellie knew the woman had spent every day that the expedition was away half-sick with worry, though her older friend had never complained to anyone. Ellie has already decided she will never, ever run for mayor.

“Will this give me super powers?” Ellie grumps, not thrilled about this latest round of tests.

“I hope so. Let’s find out,” Mark says dryly.

Ellie bursts into peals of laughter. Mark Copper never jokes. She didn’t see it coming.

He continues in his flat monotone, not even a hint of smile on his lips. “You’re never going to be able to shoot lasers from your eyes if you don’t stay still.”

She giggles deeply, all the way in the back of her throat, and does her best not to move.

 

* * *

 

She walks the streets. It is early evening and the day is cooling off. Summer in Jackson is weird. Some days it’s almost chilly. Other days it’s hot and humid, like Boston. Today had been a pleasant, sunny day, but sticky. She hadn’t been able to nap no matter how hard she tried. She’s walking around instead. She wants to cry but she doesn’t. Ahead of her, a small group of kids, some not quite her age, the rest much younger, are having a watergun fight. A few of them wave at her as she passes. Others point and whisper. A little girl, no more than ten or eleven, asks if she wants to play. Ellie sees the poorly hidden alarm written across the face of the mother watching the group from her front porch. Ellie forces a smile, makes a polite excuse, and keeps walking. The bitter, hateful sound of the laughing children hammers at her ears. It was a mistake to even leave the fucking house.

 

* * *

 

Ellie is angry and ashamed and confused and hurt. She can’t explain any of it. She doesn’t want to talk about it.

She is in the living room, stitching up a tear on the sleeve on one of Joel’s work shirts. He is in the kitchen, banging around and cleaning up breakfast. French toast. Really just regular toast with butter and syrup and a generous dusting of twenty-year-old cinnamon powder barely holding on to its flavor. He said it was almost as good as the real thing. Ellie has never had French toast in of any kind, real or fake. It tasted great to her. Hot and fresh, crunchy without being stale. She knows she should say something. ‘Thank you’, or ‘that was delicious’ or something. But she’s still mad at him. Talking to him is too risky sometimes. If she starts to talk for too long, she’s sure it will all come out: the accusations, the anger, the guilt, the tears. Better to just stitch. Stitch and sew and not think about it for a while. Push the needle and thread through again and again until she’s not quite as angry as she was when she started.

Soon enough the sleeve is once again intact and, just for good measure, two wobbly buttons have been firmly reattached. She finally puts the sewing box away. In a minute, Joel is going to come into the living room. She’ll hand him the shirt and he’ll praise her work and she won’t want to hear a fucking word he has to say but she’ll smile all the same and keep it all bottled up inside her like she does every day when she sees him off to work, like she always does, like she has to do, because what other choice does she have.

 

* * *

 

The glass hypodermic syringe comes out of a clear, thick vinyl bag with her name neatly written on it in narrow stripes of red paint. The needle has been sanitized, of course. Corinne sees to it diligently. Medical supplies have to be reused in times of scarcity and so cleanliness is paramount. But Ellie is a special case. She has a needle of her very own that will never be used on anyone but her.

_Nobody else wants to be anywhere near the thing once it’s been in me._

“More blood?” she asks unhappily from her perch on the long table of the examination room.

“This should be the last time for a while,” Corinne says, wiping the skin inside the crease of Ellie’s elbow with a small, neatly trimmed square of alcohol-soaked cloth that had one been part of a white t-shirt. “Hopefully.”

“If you say so,” Ellie sighs.

The needle goes in. Blood fills the little glass tube. Ellie says nothing. Corinne wipes the wound when she’s done. The little scrap of rag cloth will be incinerated rather than washed in bleach. Better safe than sorry. The nurse studies the sad girl carefully. Ellie’s mood usually brightens when she’s in the clinic, but not today.

“Not happy in Jackson?” the nurse asks.

“I don’t know,” Ellie mumbles, knowing she’s being a pain to everybody around her, but not knowing how to fix her sour mood. Her head hurts. It hurts all the time lately. She’s sleeping too damn much but what else is there to do? “I… I like it here… I guess… But I’m just… I don’t know.”

“Give it time. You’ve only been here two months.”

“Sure.”

 

* * *

 

Maria’s fingers are small, nearly as small as Ellie’s, but they are incredibly graceful. They dance across the keys, music leaping up, filling the air of the big, empty meeting hall. There is no one in here but Ellie and the mayor.

“Staring at the bottom of your glass, hoping one day you’ll make a dream last,” Maria sings in a rich contralto. Ellie wishes she had a voice that sounded like that, smoky and sexy and not high and clear and boring like hers does. “But dreams come slow and they go so fast…”

Maria had asked her to help with office work this morning, mostly sorting through boxes and drawers, organizing ledgers, straightening things up. General cleaning and sorting, really. Nothing to exciting. She told Ellie it was because her legs and back were killing her and the baby was kicking the bejezeezus out of her today and so she needed the help of someone a little bit younger and a whole lot less pregnant. Maria is due any day now, sure, but Ellie suspects it was really Maria’s way of getting her out of the house. The teenager knows she needs it. She’s spending too much time there, mostly sleeping the days away, trying not to think about anything.

“You see her when you fall asleep, but never to touch and never to keep.”

After they were done with her office, before coming in here to play the piano, Maria treated Ellie to lunch at the best and only restaurant in town, Shelly Hammond’s ‘The Electric Sugar Cookie Saloon + Disco’. The food is good and there’s music too, a record player and a boombox with a whole shelf full of albums and CDs. Shelly keeps them behind the counter, out of reach, but you can make requests for your favorite songs. If Shelly doesn’t like your taste in music the selection costs a penny for three songs, otherwise it’s a penny for five. Ellie always takes pocket change, just in case. Not everyone in Jackson is sophisticated to appreciate her refined taste in music. It’s not actually a disco despite the colorful name, but Shelly has a sense of humor that Ellie appreciates. Most of the bachelors in town eat most of their meals there. Entire families drop by too. Eating out can be a nice treat. She and Joel go in there, sometimes, when they have a little money to spare. Joel always buys her a dessert, usually a warm, fresh sugar cookie. It makes her smile every time. That’s why he does it, of course.

_Joel_.

Any day now, she expects Joel to just start shouting at her, to make her get up, to make her do _something_. But he hasn’t. And he won’t.

“Cause you loved her too much and you dived too deep.”

It’s not like him to let her get away with stuff like this. He never did it before. He was always good at setting boundaries and keeping her inside the lines, more or less. He isn’t doing that now.

_He’s feeling guilty. That’s why he’s going so easy on me and letting me slide._

She doesn’t want to think about it. She tries hard to push it out of her aching head but it won’t go. She shoves it down instead, deep inside her, stomping it down like she used to do with the laundry basket she shared with Riley. Music and words have passed her by. She doesn’t know this song. She wants to learn it so she can sing it later. She tries to listen. She really does. Maria doesn’t play for many people, mostly just Tommy. It’s ‘un-mayor-ly’ behavior, maybe, to show your softer side by singing love songs and stuff. Ellie knows this is a special thing her friend is doing for her.

“Staring at the ceiling in the dark, the same old empty feeling in your heart… Cause love comes slow and it goes so fast.”

_Why won’t he tell me what really happened? Why can’t I just fucking ask him?_

Those fine, strong fingers work the keys harder, pushing the notes higher. The husky-smooth voice soars up to meet them.

“You only need the light when it’s burning low. Only miss the sun when it starts to snow.”

_Because I don’t want to know. I’m afraid._

“Only hate the road when you’re missing home.”

_I’m guilty too._

Ellie wants to go back to sleep. It’s easier to deal with this shit when she’s not awake. In a minute, an interrupting knock at the door will pull Maria back into the business of being Jackson’s mayor again and Ellie will wander off, eventually finding her way back to bed. The sad song will stay in her head for days. She’ll hum it all the time, until she’s sick of it. And then, months later, she’ll come back to it again, and treasure it for years to come.

“Only know you love her when you let her go.”

_Riley._

_I did some terrible shit. Awful, awful shit. I have nightmares about it. But I did it because I had to… So it wasn’t all for nothing._

_But it didn’t do any good._

Ellie tries to let her friend go. Tears threaten to form at the edges of green eyes. She blinks them away and watches Maria’s fingers dance.

Maria’s pretty blue eyes are closed. Ellie doesn’t know it, but in this brief moment, the unflappable mayor of Jackson is her daddy’s girl again, performing the song she has learned, showing him that those piano lessons her grandmother paid for haven’t gone to waste. She and her daddy are safe and sound in the big house near the college where he works, and her mom is still alive and the world isn’t on fire and the house isn’t burning down to ash and everything is good and everyone is happy and piano lessons still matter more than digging through trash all day looking for something, anything to eat. The skin around Maria’s eyes is beginning to show lines, not too deep yet, but there all the same. The mayor of Jackson isn’t a carefree girl anymore, but when she plays the piano, she can pretend she is.

She wishes Ellie could pretend too. She won’t stop trying to reach out to her. She knows something that Tommy and Joel will never truly understand: sometimes a girl just needs a sad song to help her feel whatever she needs to feel. And this particular girl is family now, so Maria pours her heart into this song.

“And you let her go.”

 

* * *

 

Ellie is in her room. She’s always in her room, but at least she’s awake today. She’s decided to decorate, as much as she’s able to, anyway. If she’s going to be surrounded by the same four walls all the time, she wants them to reflect something of her. The trusty old backpack is open. It’s been sitting in the closet since she moved into this house. Until this moment, it’s been packed, ready to go in case Joel or Maria or whoever told her she had to leave. Or maybe it was her who wanted to leave. She can’t remember now. It feels like it she was waiting for both things to happen at various points since she came to Jackson.

But she’s tired of living out of a backpack. And she’s tired of Joel asking her if she’s ever going to unpack. She’s tired of the up and downs of her constantly shifting moods.

_I don’t want to be sad anymore. I’m just fucking tired of it._

Three nights ago, while Joel was sound asleep upstairs, Ellie had stood in the open doorway of their home, bathed in starlight, her shoes laced tightly, the straps of her backpack snug across her shoulders, gun and knife in her pockets, her hand on the doorknob, feeling the cool night air on her face, ready to sneak out, to run away, to leave Joel alone with his lies.

_But I didn’t go._

_I wanted to. Sort of. But I didn’t._

_He’d be sad without me._

_Fuck, he’d be a wreck without me._

_Whatever it was he did in Utah, he did for me._

_And that’s why I’m still here… that’s why I’m not going anywhere._

_He loves me._

She digs in her pack. One pair at a time, she takes out her t-shirts and places them in the chest of drawers by her big, comfy bed. She doesn’t have many of her old shirts left. She used most of the ones she’d had as bandages when Joel was wounded. There’s still plenty of room in the drawer, so she tucks her socks in there too. Her pants go into the bottom drawer. Her underwear goes into the top drawer. Underwear deserves its own drawer, that’s what Riley always said. Nothing better than soft, clean undies. It’s like a treat you give yourself every morning. Words from a previous life come back to her.

_‘But only if you can make your dorky freshman roommate do the damn laundry like she’s supposed to. Otherwise there’s going to be a foot up someone’s ass if I have to put on dirty underwear again.’_

Ellie smiles in the empty house.

The clothes are all put away. She pulls out her old green army blanket. Freshly washed by the women at the town laundromat and folded in preparation for running away from Jackson. She puts it in a drawer instead of in the window box with all the other blankets. This blanket is special. It’s too good to be dumped in with the regular ones. This blanket went on an adventure with her. It’s a ‘special occasion blanket’ now.

There are still more things packed cleverly at the bottom of the pack, arranged in such a way that no space is wasted. Ammo. Magazines, both the kind that hold bullets and the kind you read. Paperbacks too. Her trio of joke books and a few of the more interesting novels she discovered here and there. She pulls them out and makes a tiny library on one of the shelves of the bookcase that came with the house. It was in the downstairs hallway originally, but she hauled it up here. Joel offered to help but she wanted to do it herself. Lugging it up the steps almost put her in an early grave, but she managed it.

She surveys her work. It will take a lot more books than the few she has to fill that shelf up. Maybe she can talk Joel into buying her a few paperbacks the next time drags her to the general store. Andy, the one-legged man who runs the place has a big stack of them, and most are only five or ten cents.

Half a box of crayons, leftover from the crude candles they made during the winter spent in the lawyer’s office. That’s the part of winter she hangs on to. The second half. The good half. Not the first half, spent in the basement of that old house, tending to Joel and trying to keep the horse upstairs in the garage fed… she’s doing everything she can to bury those memories so deep that they’ll stop finding their way into her nightmares.

She blinks and makes her eyes focus on the crayons rattling around inside the old cardboard box.

_I’ll find a big, white piece of paper… I’ll write ‘Ellie’s Room’ on it with these little guys. I’ll put it on the door for everybody to see. And nobody will take it down, like those fuckers always did back at the school._

_Oh shit! I just realized I’m in the room at the end of the hallway up here. I’m a ‘dead ender’ again._

A sudden peal of semisweet laughter fills the room.

She shakes the box of crayons and smiles at the ways in which life is a wheel sometimes, and not always in a bad way. She places the yellow and green carton next to the bedside lamp, on top of the two, upside down, stacked milk crates that serve as her nightstand.

She puts the pistol ammo for her Beretta in the top drawer, next to her gun and her Hello Kitty cigarette lighter, within easy reach of the bed. Eleven rounds. Not quite enough to fill two magazines. She’s going to need more of that too.

The shotgun ammo she finds rolling around loose in the pack is something she has no use for anymore. She hasn’t for a long time, but she couldn’t bear to part with it. She climbs up on the windowsill and arranges the shells carefully along the top of the bookshelf, standing them up on their brass bottoms. Two dark red ones, one bright blue shell, ammo she bartered for at the bridge city of Burlington, and a single sea-green round, the last of the original batch of ammo that had come with the shotgun. They were colorful and decorative and potentially deadly if provoked. She thought they made her room a very, very Ellie sort of place.

She digs around at the bottom of the pack, where the real treasures are. She pulls Riley’s dogtag out and places it under her pillow. She’ll hold it and think about her lost friend later tonight, after she’s gone to bed.

The letter from her mother she leaves in the waterproof plastic bag, hiding beneath the false bottom of the pack. It’s the safest place for it.

Maps for all the states they passed through. Joel let her keep them. Sometimes she likes to spread them out on the floor, edge to edge, and trace the route they took. She can still remember all the twists and turns. She misses the Honda. She misses the horse too. He deserved better than the ending he got, hungry, cold, running as fast as he could, scared as hell. He was such a good horse and her only friend during the long weeks Joel spent recovering. She told all her secrets to that horse, even the ones she never told Riley. Callus really knew how to keep a secret. He never let her down either. He was the best horse in the world and she doesn’t even have dogtags to remember him by. Life isn’t fair.

She finds a badly crumpled paper airplane made from a brochure advertising the historical and famous Tamarack House, a relic of the First Annual Ellie Williams Air Show Spectacular. A smile flashes across her face. She had forgotten all about this. She’ll use it as a bookmark. Her bottle cap opener is down there too, and an empty wrapper of M&Ms, a memento of the first time she and Joel just sat and talked and bonded, before things got so complicated between them. She wonders about the pretty woman at the Motel 6. Did Tala ever find anybody else from her group? Kristi Chau’s ConAgra ID card is in there too. She looks at the old photo and wishes she could have held on to the keychain for the Honda. She liked the picture of Kristi and her husband that was attached to the keys. She pulls out the empty matchbox, some dead guy’s souvenir from a brothel in Nevada. Maybe she can find something to keep in this little box.

She lays these things on the bed to be sorted later. The pack isn’t quite empty yet. She kneels down and peers inside again.

Her sexy purple bra and panty set is in there too, smushed up safely inside an airtight sandwich baggie. She puts them in her underwear drawer, still in the baggie, hiding them behind her sports bras. Maybe she’ll wear these silly things again some day; maybe she won’t.

A small, yellow tin of Anacin. The sole pill rattling inside isn’t Anacin. She puts it on the bed too. Maybe Corinne and Dr. Copper can use it. Maybe one of them will know what kind of medicine it is.

There’s a photo of four people, a medical rescue team. Their helicopter crashed in a mall and one by one, they died, long before Ellie found the sole medkit they left behind. The photo is tattered on the edges and bloodstained. Everyone signed it and someone drew a funny party hat on the woman in the group. Ellie puts it on the bed too. She didn’t know them, not really, but she wants to remember them so they don’t fade away entirely from a world they tried to save. She wishes she still had the Polaroid of her and Riley, or the token from Raja’s arcade. She wishes she’d thought to keep the photo of Winston she and Riley found in his tent.

She finds her flashlight. She’d recovered this from the scummy, flooded Boston subway tunnels. She flicks the switch and it came to life. She smiles. This is a damn good light. It goes in the top drawer next to the gun and the lighter.

Another baggie holds a disposable razor. She took this from the luggage at the Motel 6. It belonged to Tala and Ellie says a silent prayer that the woman is okay, wherever she is.

A small notepad. She’d found it shoved down between the seat cushions of a Firefly truck that had been shot up by the army. There are all kinds of weird codes and radio frequency notes inside it. She makes a mental note to show it to Maria.

A business card from the garage in East Liberty, the one with the old Camaro. Another business card from the gas station in Johnstown, the one the unnamed woman had turned into her personal bunker. A fossilized packet of parmesan cheese from a pizza joint in Abingdon, the same town where she’d helped Joel collect dryer lint for the first time and that crazy fucker in the pawn shop had almost set her partner on fire. She’d lost her little naked glass guy there, the one she’d swiped from the head shop with all the cool t-shirts.

“Baron Fancyhat McPickle,” she whispers, smiling, recalling. “Your sacrifice was not in vain, my very classy friend.”

A shoe polish tin, still holding a few scraps of charcloth. She’d made it herself, just like Joel had showed her. So many little things, some useful, some silly, but all of it is important to her. Things like these can save your life. Even the silly things. Sometimes, especially the silly things most of all. They remind you of who you are. People go crazy on the road, like the man with the aluminum baseball bat and crazy eyes.

The pack is almost empty now. She knows what is down there. She’s been pushing it this way and that, moving it out of the way, not wanting to deal with it just yet.

She pulls out the bottle of Scope instead. It is almost full. She’d only ever taken one drink from it, before quickly realizing what a terrible mistake that was. It is filled with pretty, green liquid though. She sits it on the bookshelf where it will catch the morning light.

Only one thing left now. She sighs heavily. She has been dreading this all along and only now realizes it.

She pulls the colorful, plastic toy robot out and drops the empty pack to the floor. It lies there, crumpled and deflated. It looks so strange, all empty like that. It has never been empty since she was given it as part of her basic kit at the military school. Her best junk was always in that bag when she was a student – not the _really_ bad contraband, of course, you had to hide that stuff really well or risk losing it – but her favorite little bits and pieces of the world gone by: gum, candy, bendy straws, silly little toys, chattering teeth, kazoos, plastic snow globes filled with old water and plastic flakes and funny little scenes. For a while, it held her water guns. Bright and colorful and loads of super soaking fun. They had meant the world to her. They were lying on the filthy, cracked floor in the old Boston mall, forgotten, discarded forever. There was no room for them in the pack after that night. Her entire life had to fit in the pack. No room for toys, only important stuff. Clothes, food, bullets. Only a little space reserved for the fun stuff.

She blinks. She has been distracting herself on purpose. She makes herself look at it. She doesn’t want to, but she does anyway.

The robot.

“Why did I even keep you?” she asks the toy she is holding. “Why did I haul you around everywhere? You were just taking up space, that’s all you ever did. That was stupid of me. I should have pulled you out and thrown you away and freed up some room for extra food or soap or socks or something useful.”

The trashcan is against the wall, over by the door.

_Junk. That’s all this is. Junk taking up space._

_Henry was right._

She stares at the can. She stares at the toy in her hand. She frowns, her brow knit with unspoken frustration.

_His name was Sam._

With a heavy sigh, she tries to let the guilt go and places the silly toy on the shelf next to the bottle of Scope. Colorful. Bright. Decorative. Not junk.

“I couldn’t save anyone,” she says to no one at all.

She leaves the newly decorated room. She doesn’t want to be in it anymore.

 

* * *

 

She leans over the armrest of Corinne’s swivel chair, peers through the nearby door, and sees the electric guitar inside the office, resting in its stand. An amplifier is next to it.

“Oh cool!” she enthuses. “You play the guitar?”

Copper looks, didn’t realize he’d left the door to his sanctuary closed. He makes a noncommittal sigh. Ellie is a regular presence here. So regular, in fact, he’s starting to think of her as hospital staff. He’s begun to treat her that way sometimes too, looking the other way discretely when Corinne lets her help with light work, like record keeping and filing.

“He plays,” Corinne says, near at hand, like always. “Beautifully,” she adds. “But only when no one is around.”

“I’m no one,” Ellie chirps. “Play something for me.”

“Some other time,” Mark mutters. He seems excited, in a very subdued way. Ellie wants to ask him about it, but she is distracted by the guitar in his office.

“I want to learn how to play the guitar one of these days,” Ellie says, hoping this will engage the quiet man in further conversation. It’s weird having q-tips swirled around the depths of your nose in silence.

Dr. Copper makes another noise that no one can guess the meaning of except himself. Guitar related chit-chat does not follow. Ellie tilts her head back and the swab goes in.

A moment later, Mark hands the swab to Corinne, who dutifully dunks it into the malt extract mix. Ellie leaves, humming a guitar riff. She never hears Mark playing a solo of his own. The thick walls of the hospital hide the sound.

 

* * *

 

“You probably oughta put on a jacket or somethin’, y’know.” Tommy’s tone is too dad-like for her taste.

“I’ve got long sleeves,” she mutters. “No one can see the bite.”

“Ain’t what I meant, Sven.”

Ellie still hasn’t decided if she likes Tommy calling her Sven or not. It makes her smile every time he does it, but she feels like maybe she might be too old for nicknames.

“Asshole,” she says, grumbling, but in an affectionate way. “I knew I should’ve never told you about my top secret gnome plans.”

“Can’t take it back once you put it out there. That’s how it works.”

She snickers, very faintly. She likes Tommy. He doesn’t put any pressure on her to be happy, unlike just about everyone else in her life does. He just lets her be her. He was all alone up in this watchtower, watching the sun slip below the jagged edge of the world, when she began to climb up the ladder to him. Other than a friendly hello, he let her sit there in silence until she was ready to talk. Tommy is just like Joel in that way. Conversation is completely optional with him.

_I wonder if it drives Maria as crazy it does me?_

_Must be a Texas thing._

She sighs for dramatic effect. “That’s what I get for sneaking a beer at the cookout, I guess. I get drunk and I get a motor mouth.”

“Ah, we all knew you wasn’t drinkin’ tea. We just didn’t say anything.”

“Even Joel?”

“Sure. He says you’re pretty funny when you’re drunk.” There is a twinkle in Tommy’s eye. “He’s right about that.”

She giggles and looks at her shoes. She wants to forgive Joel. She wants things to be like they used to be between them. She wants that so, so much.

Tommy’s walkie-talkie crackles to life.

“Tower 6, check in.” The voice belongs to Evan or Ethan or whatever that guy’s name is, the one who works with the pigs and the sheep.

_He must have dispatch duty tonight. Probably a nice break from all the pig poop._

“Tower 6. All clear,” Tommy answers, and stuffs the radio back into the pocket of his denim jacket. In fifteen minutes, he’ll have to check in again. Routine is boring, but routine keeps Jackson safe.

_Sloppy gets you killed._

A chill wind blows down from the majestic mountains, the sides of which are glowing like molten gold in the light of the departing sun. She shivers.

“Brrr.”

“See? That’s why I wore a jacket. I’m smarter than I look. Or maybe it’s because I don’t drink as much as you do.”

“Oh, be quiet,” she grumps sweetly. “It was _one_ beer.”

“Shit, Sven. I woulda figured Norwegians like you had more sense when it comes to the cold.”

“I’m Irish,” she snarks. She doesn’t know for sure that she is, of course, but the nuns told her she probably was. That’s good enough for her. Orphans had to hang on to any bit of heritage they could find.

“Me too,” Tommy says, a well-chewed toothpick bobbing at the edge of his mouth.

“Really?”

“Nah,” he grins. “I’m Scottish. Least I think I am. Some of me, anyway. On my dad’s side.”

He pulls out an old blanket from the supply box and hands it to her. She wraps herself up in it. She has a sudden, surprising desire to snuggle up against him. Not romantic, or anything like that. She just wants to lean on somebody. He’s so much like Joel that it would probably feel very familiar to her. But Tommy is a married man and he might get the wrong idea. She stays on her side of the tower.

_There’s too many stories going around about me as it is. I don’t need another fucking rumor._

Snug inside the makeshift hood of her blanket, she grins.

_A ‘fucking’ rumor about me having an affair. Ha! Pun!_

“Is it okay if I stay up here a little while longer, Tommy?”

“Sure. I’d like the company, to tell the truth. Gets kinda borin’ up here, you know?”

“Cool.”

Minutes pass. Below, townsfolk stroll past, going about their evening business, safe and sound and damned thankful for that. Everyone knows how bad it can get out there.

“Soooo… what was your dad like?” Ellie asks, starting the conversation with Tommy, just like she always had to do with Joel in the past. It’s not like that lately. Now she’s the quiet one in the house and Joel is always trying to get her involved in small talk. She hates it. It doesn’t feel normal. If she could just forgive him, things could go back to normal and she could be the one asking all the questions.

“Ah,” Tommy begins after a long, uncertain inhaling of breath. “He was… alright… I guess. He was a drunk. But he taught me and my brother how to do all sorts of stuff. I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should’ve at the time… but knowin’ how to do some of those things came in real handy when the outbreak hit.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Huntin’, fishin’, ridin’… Campin’ stuff, y’know?” He chuckles in a dark, somber way, his eyes fixed on a point in time only he can see. “Taught me how to take a punch too. That sure came in handy.”

“Jeez,” Ellie remarks, wondering if broaching this topic was a mistake. “Sounds more bad than good.”

“It all comes out in the wash, yeah?” Tommy answers, giving her a lopsided smile. She sees that his eyes are sad. The smile is a lie, or maybe just a fib. “He was the only dad I ever had. Way I see it, if I can teach my kids all the things my dad taught me, and do it without hittin’ them upside the head too much, then I’ll be happy enough when they put me in the ground.”

He chuckles, making the best of it, like always. Ellie smiles too, pulling the blanket tightly around her, wondering how much longer she can stay up here before Joel comes looking for her.

“You catch a cold, Sven, you got nobody to blame but yourself.”

“Norwegians don’t catch colds, dude.”

 

* * *

 

Breakfast. Bacon and eggs. The bacon is fresh, part of the small summer slaughter. Just a few hogs this time. In the autumn, even more pigs will suddenly find themselves on the menu. In all her life, Ellie has never had bacon until just two days ago, when Joel brought this heavenly treat home from the General Store and put it in the fridge where Ellie plans to build a holy shrine to its butcher paper-wrapped goodness. Bacon is, she has declared, her favorite thing ever.

She’s in a good mood this morning. She’s the one to start the conversation today. It’s a nice change of pace for Joel.

“Are those new tools?” she asks, a fork in her mouth, motioning with her chin towards the assortment of leather pouches and metal doo-dads piled atop the kitchen table next to Joel.

“Yeah. Finally scraped enough money together to buy a full set from Andy. Gave Tommy all his borrowed ones back. Now he can’t hang that over my head anymore.”

“Was he giving you shit about it?”

“Nah. Never said a word about it to me, to be honest. But better safe than sorry. Don’t need him remindin’ me about it.”

“Tommy wouldn’t do that to you, dude.”

“I reckon not. Don’t matter none now. He’s got ‘em back and I can stop worryin’ about it.”

She shrugs and chews, savoring every bite. Joel is going to spend the next few days at the dam, further down the river, miles from here. The truck and horses are leaving in an hour or so. By the time he returns, all the bacon will have mysteriously disappeared from the fridge.

 

* * *

 

Over a clean white thermal top, she’s wearing her ‘girly shirt’, the one Joel bought for her at Andy Givener’s General Store. He left it folded neatly on her bed one day without any fanfare. She treasures it. She doesn’t own many girly things. So few cute things survived the end of the world. The shirt is pink and white and has a funny, sleepy-looking cartoon bear on the front. Below the bear are the words ‘Bearly Awake.’ She likes the shirt, though it is admittedly not something a girl should wear if she wants to promote her reputation as a tiny asskicker. If she had known she was going to wind up on stage in front of half the fucking town this morning, she’d have picked out something different before leaving the house.

Town hall. Bigwig meeting. “A Thousand Miles” is tinkling on the piano. A pair of voices argue over the lyrics. Ellie could tell them. She knows the song by heart. Riley loved that song. It spoke to her friend in ways Ellie didn’t understand until later. She waits in the little room just off from the main hall. She doesn’t like it in here. She won’t like it out there on the stage either. Ellie doesn’t want to go out there in front of everyone. She says as much.

“Neither do I,” Mark tells her.

He took a handful of pills and chased them with a big drink of something earlier, back in his office, before he walked here with her. He didn’t say what it was. She hopes he’s not getting a cold or something. Now he meditates or prays or something. His head is down for a few seconds. Then it’s up with a quick movement, and in that moment, he is suddenly, inexplicably, tall, proud, and unflappable. It’s a sham, she’s sure of it, but an impressive one. She has never seen him like this. His bearing reminds her of the instructors at the school. A commanding presence. He is a _doctor_ , more now than she has ever seen him be. She remembers the nurses she trained with in Boston and how they used to joke that people like to say that doctors want to play God but really every doctor thinks he _is_ God. She never spoke to any of the doctors, they always ignored the trainee nurses like her, but that’s how they acted: like the world was theirs and everyone else was just living in it. She is a bit in awe of no longer quiet, no longer brittle Doctor Copper now. He acts like a doctor should. This is his world, and she’s lucky to live in it rent-free. She wonders if this is who he used to be before something terrible shattered him into the fragile, cracked apart, taped together shell he’s become. She wonders how long he can keep doing this. If it were easy for him, he’d do it all the time, right? She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t want to break his spell. He sees her looking at him, half in wonder, half in admiration. He smiles tenderly, the only hint that the real Mark is still inside. He pulls a green apple lollipop from his coat pocket.

“I’ve been saving that for you. You’re my best patient, you know.” His voice is firmer, deeper, almost a baritone like Joel.

She beams adorably. Ellie’s need for praise, sadly, is almost bottomless; it is the price of being an orphan. She wants to punch him in the arm, but knows better. Mark is wearing invisible armor. It weighs so much. She knows a little about that herself. She’s worn her own suit of it from time to time. He can’t keep it on for long. Denting it with a friendly punch won’t help him. She unwraps the lollipop and sticks it in her mouth instead. The sour apple taste is still strong even though the candy is older than her. Rock candy never really goes bad.

“Let’s go,” he says. Not an invitation. A polite command, the kind doctors give.

She nods and follows him through the door without question. These are doctor’s orders, after all.

He takes her with him, down to the end of the short hallway, through the door, up the four small stairs to the stage, to stand in front of the others – all the important people in town. They fall silent as he arrives.

“This is Ellie,” he says without preamble. “I’ve called this meeting to explain fully her unique condition and address the irrational fear some people still have regarding her.”

Uncomfortable murmuring tries to fill in the spaces at the end of his sentence, but Mark won’t allow it. He presses on without pause. He isn’t interested in their excuses or their embarrassment.

“We are all fearful of the virulent CBI fungus. Quite sensibly so. It would be foolish of us not to be afraid. It destroyed the world so completely and so quickly that the scientific community never agreed on an accepted name for this particular variant that suddenly appeared and targeted humans. Why is this incredibly important mutant strain still unnamed? Why do we just call it Cordyceps Brain Infection, or CBI instead of something fancy and Latin? Because there simply wasn’t time to have the debate. The world ended too quickly.”

No one says a word.

“Ellie is infected by CBI. There’s no denying it. As I’ve already told you… as I’ve _been_ telling you since she and Joel arrived in this town… though she is infected, this girl is _not_ _infectious_. And even if she were, she would transmit the benign strain she carries.”

Mark studies the crowd. They feel his judgment of them. They have been wrong to exclude and shun the girl. He wants them to feel ashamed of that choice.

“This is cordyceps in her, true. But hers is a _unique_ case. I’ve studied her particular strain extensively. There is nothing to worry about.”

Some murmuring voices of dissent, questioning his opinion, his judgment, his authority.

“Nothing to worry about?” someone asks. “Isn’t that exactly what Obama said right at the start of the outbreak?”

“And he was wrong!” another adds.

“President Obama was misinformed by FEMA and then arrested and imprisoned by FEDRA. _I_ am the only medical doctor in town,” Mark reminds them sternly, safe inside his invisible armor. “Our friends over at Wind River send their sickest people to us, to ME specifically. They entrust the members of their tribe to my care, just as Jackson does. _Yours_ , Mr. Phelps,” he says with a stern point of his finger, “is not an expert opinion.”

No one seems to know what to make of this new Dr. Copper. Dissent is reduced to a few doubtful murmurs. Only one man can find his voice.

“One bite, Doc. One cut. That’s all it would take,” the bold man says. “Even accidentally! And who knows what would happen then?”

“This is what would happen!” Copper barks (Ellie has never heard that tone from him. No one in Jackson has). He plucks the lollipop from Ellie’s mouth and sticks it into his own. He bites down on it! The dramatic crunch echoes throughout the hall. If a pin had dropped, it would have echoed too. People gasp. Someone screams his name, a belated warning. Someone else moans, calling out to God. Mark works the candy around the interior of his mouth with his tongue, chewing, munching, the white stick bobbing crazily along the seam of his closed lips. Ellie realizes her mouth is hanging open. She can still taste the green apple. It was just there a second ago. Mark’s eyes are fierce, fearless, as he stares back at an astonished crowd.

“What’s going to happen to me? Precisely _nothing!_ ” Mark says, holding out the white candy stick for them to see. Little bits of green candy are still clinging to it. “Ellie is NOT infectious. This is a _certainty_. Frankly, I wish she were. If that were the case, she would have just inoculated me against Cordyceps Brain Infection by introducing into my body the same protective, symbiotic strain that lives inside her. The unique mutation of that CBI strain is what grants this girl her remarkable immunity to the parasite. It’s no different, in the abstract, than any of the other microbiota that live in all of us, protecting us from all manner of unpleastantries. This is science. _Evolution_. Over time, the human species has adapted to numerous things that were initially deadly to us. We had to; otherwise we would have gone extinct long ago. Every plague that came along tried its best to wipe us out. None of them did. We survived. We adapted. We always have… And we will again.”

“So…” begins someone near the back, “Ellie can… what? Help us adapt to it? How? Like a flu shot?”

Mark shakes his head. “A shot? No. Sadly, nothing as simple as that. Not yet. But that’s why I called this meeting. I wanted to officially inform the council and the town elders that I’m working on a way to create what, in layman’s terms, could be thought of as a vaccine.”

Ellie blinks in surprise. Lots of people do.

_What did he just say?_

The crowd tries to break into his speech with their own words. He won’t allow it.

“Be quiet!”

They fall into shocked, obedient silence. This is not the Mark they know.

“My work is based on cultures I’ve grown from samples provided generously by her. I’m convinced a treatment, an inoculation against the parasite is possible. Very possible.”

A woman speaks, “But didn’t the Fireflies say that’s not gonna happen? When Joel took her down to Colorado?”

Ellie winces.

“Utah,” Maria corrects from her place in the front row.

“Salt Lake City,” Tommy says over his shoulder. He turns his head to face the stage. “They didn’t find a cure, Doc. Joel said so.”

“Tommy,” Mark says, gesturing at the friendly face in the front row. “You were a Firefly, yes?”

“That’s right,” Tommy nods. “Buncha people in town were.”

“How often did you fight the army?” Mark asks.

“Too damn many times,” Tommy chuckles. A ripple of laughter goes through the crowd.

“Did you ever win when you fought them?” Mark asks.

“Not very often,” Tommy admits.

“Unless we cheated!” someone near the back adds, prompting another undercurrent of laughter.

“Why not?” Mark asks. “Why couldn’t you beat them?”

Tommy shrugs. “Too many of them, usually.”

Mark presses on; he has a point to make. “And if the numbers were even? What about then?”

Tommy rubs the back of his neck. His days as a Firefly aren’t ones he recollects fondly.

“Sometimes,” he says. “I guess. But most of the time, no. We usually got our asses handed to us.”

“What was their advantage?” Mark asks. “One on one, why did the soldiers outclass the Fireflies?”

“Better equipment,” Tommy replies, adding grudgingly, “and better training too. Soldiers don’t break and run too easy. We usually did.”

“And we come to my point,” Mark says, tipping his chin back subtly, slightly haughty.

Ellie feels the energy radiating off Dr. Copper in great, pulsing waves. This is who he was once, she is certain of it. A long time ago, before the world fell down, before whatever terrible thing happened to him and broke him apart into a million pieces, this is who he was. She can see it as plain as day.

Doctor Mark Copper was an asshole.

“The Fireflies mean well. _Perhaps_ ,” Mark allows, his stare an uncompromising judgment of the audience. “And I’ll concede the point that their ideals were noble enough in the beginning. I don’t dispute that. But the Fireflies as an organization were flawed from their very inception. They were founded by a volatile mixture of idealistic college students and paranoid anti-government militia-types. Not a combination that is built to last. And now they are worn down, exhausted, always on the run, and operating out of ramshackle facilities they can never hold on to for long. It’s always been like that for them. They try to be professional soldiers, but they are not. Many of them are paranoid reactionaries. The rest are, to put it charitably, quixotic dreamers. Or they were. Personally,” he adds, arms crossed, somehow dignified and regal despite the chewed white lollipop stick in his hand, “I think they’re nothing more than thugs at this point. If they had the cure, which they don’t and never will, they would use it as leverage against the world.”

With three quick, aggressive steps, he arrives at the center of the stage, confronting those seated bellow, shoving his words at them in righteous salvoes. His voice booms as he points to the audience, lollipop stick deliberately in view, poking out from his fist, his finger stabbing at the air, punctuating every sentence.

“You all know it! You don’t need me to tell you what they would say! _Join the Fireflies_ , or go without the cure! We told you to rise up! And you didn’t! So _pay up_ , and pay a lot, or go without the cure! **_Obey us!_** Or go without the cure!”

His voice echoes over their heads. No one says a word. Ellie thinks of Father Crocetti and his fiery speeches about the wages of sin and how little girls went to hell all the time for the smallest infraction. Mark is no longer at her side. She wishes he would come back to her. She wishes Joel were here instead of at the dam today. She wishes Tommy or Maria would come bounding up the stairs and hold her hand. She needs someone near. This stage is too big and there are too many eyes pointed in her general direction and her cute shirt suddenly seems a very stupid and childish thing to wear and she doesn’t want them to see her in it. Their eyes are all on Mark, but she is in the periphery of their sight and that is just no place to be at a time like this. She fidgets and wishes she were wearing a jacket so she could zip it up and hide that stupid sleepy bear.

“ ** _If_** they had the cure,” Mark continues in a measured voice, “I’m absolutely certain they would do little good with it. How would they test it? How would they manufacture it? How would they distribute it? Your guess is as good as mine. But I tell you this, again, with absolute certainty: FEDRA would destroy both them and their cure while trying to get it away from them. The Fireflies would _never_ give it up willingly. Fumbling about for the cure is all they can do now! It’s all they have left! The Fireflies failed at all their stated goals! Every single one of them! What else can they do except look for the cure? _What else can they do?_ Their charter reads like ancient history!”

There are uncomfortable, grim chuckles from many in the room.

Mark holds up a single finger, counting each point he is about to make. “One! ‘Restore the three branches of government!’ What government? Where? How? Better to start from scratch at this point! But they won't admit it. Their charter is like holy writ to them now!”

He holds up a second finger. “Two! ‘Allow people to return to their homes!’ My house was blown up when the Air Force firebombed Albuquerque trying to stop the spread of the infected! What about yours?”

A third finger. “Three! ‘End martial law.’ There is no other kind of law any more. Just comply with FEDRA’s commands or go outside and live with the clickers!”

A fourth finger. “And four! ‘Return the vote to the people!’ _Voting?_ Where would you put the poling stations? How would you protect the people in line? I don’t even remember where my poling precinct is! Do you?”

He smiles. The people laugh. Ellie is relieved to hear laughter. Better smiling faces than angry ones.

“Good God,” Mark boggles dramatically. “Can you even _imagine_ it? Trying to collect all the ballots, gather them up from all over the country, count them? Jesus! And we thought Gore down in Florida was a mess!”

More laughter. More happy faces. A good joke, Ellie assumes. She doesn’t get it. Gore? Like blood and guts and stuff? She doesn’t know. A few of the younger faces in the audience don’t either, she is sure of it, but they play along and laugh anyway. She does too.

Mark lets the laughter fade on its own. He needs silence for the home stretch.

“Here’s the truth of it,” he says in a voice just low enough to demand their full attention. “If, by some miracle, they actually pulled it off, if they actually found the cure… they’d want everyone to know about it. They’d want everyone… _everyone_ in the world… to know that _the Fireflies_ were right… and _FEDRA_ was _wrong_.”

Nods and murmuring assent.

“And once word got out that the Fireflies had the cure, the whole world, and I mean the _whole world,_ assuming there are any planes or boats still working, would descend upon the Utah and the Fireflies… and that would be the end of it. They’d bring every gun and every bomb they have. Desperate leaders are stupid. Governments are clumsy. Violence is the only real tool a government has anymore. Not merely the _threat_ of it, like it used to be. Not police, and not prisons, like we used to have. Not fines and not courts. Nothing soft like that. It’s not a soft world anymore. No. All they have left is a great big hammer. And they will swing it. They’re already swinging it every day in the few Quarantine Zones that are still operating. And not just in America. But in England too, in the Controlled Districts. In Russia, in the Zapovedniks, down in the train tunnels. Everywhere. Le Secteurs. Das Gebiets. The last Anzen Chitai, the one where the Japanese empress supposedly holed up, if she made it there, I mean. Each and every one of those places that are still left? They’ve all got a hammer.”

Ellie looks up at him. She enjoys hearing new words, but the story is becoming very unsettling to her.

He pats her shoulder. Ellie is glad he is still standing beside her again. She wants to be held in place. So many faces. She wants the hell off this stage. She wishes to the very bottom of her heart that she had not drunk so much water earlier.

“Remember the panic that set in when the promises of a vaccine kept coming up empty? Remember that bad batch that went out around the country and accidentally made all the crazies? Remember the panic? How everybody locked themselves inside their houses and started shooting at their neighbors because they thought that maybe Cordyceps was in the water now? Remember how things broke down when the army came around and people got dragged out of their homes and packed onto buses and shipped to Quarantine Zones only to find out that the gates were closed and nobody else was getting in? Remember that? People just standing around, not knowing what to do while helicopters circled overhead and tanks drove around those big, new walls. Remember what the soldiers and the men in nice suits shouted over the loudspeakers and the bullhorns? ‘You can’t go stay here and you can’t go home and sorry for the misunderstanding but here come the bombers. Please die in as orderly a fashion as possible.’ Sacrifices had to be made. Remember? That’s what they said.”

Heads nod. Some people, the older ones, swear quietly, old anger still simmering inside them at the wrongness done to them so many years before.

“Sacrifices,” Mark says softly, “are easy to make if you’re not the one being asked to die.”

Everyone murmurs, the older ones remembering, the younger ones trying to imagine.

“Remember the civil wars? Remember Ohio? Nevada? Texas? Remember all the pictures on the news? The riots everywhere? The crackdowns? The executions? All over the world, we saw people lined up against the wall. No trials, just bullets. … Remember the wars? The _real_ wars? The ones near the end, as everything was running out of steam and winding down?”

The younger ones don’t remember, of course. The older ones do, and wish they didn’t.

“Why war?” Mark asks. “Why send your army off to war when there wasn’t much of a nation left to defend? I’ll tell you why. Because the enemy was a _mushroom_. Mushrooms can’t be killed with tanks… But people can.”

The words hang in the air, cold and heavy over their heads. Mark waits an uncomfortable, mournful moment before continuing.

“And when the screws are really put to you, and you can’t fight the enemy you have, then you find one you can fight. You _make_ an enemy, if that’s what you have to do. Any enemy will do. Other nations. Other states. Other towns. Strangers. Neighbors. Family. Turn the innocent into criminals if that’s all you’ve got left to fight. But you find an enemy and you punish them and that proves to all the remaining people, the ones you didn’t shoot, that you’re legitimate and that you’re in charge and that you have the all the power and they don’t have any… Because what good is a government unless it has _power_?”

Silence.

“Those old governments out still out there. We hear them on the short wave some nights, when the signal bounces off the atmosphere just right. I don’t know how that works,” he shrugs with a modest, self-effacing grin. “You’d have to ask Lonny or Jim. I don’t know radios. I’m just a simple country doctor,” he fibs, smiling.

A gentle ripple of laughter, a badly needed one.

He continues, deadly serious again. “But they _are_ out there. I don’t know for certain how many are left, but they’re out there, somewhere, still hanging on. And they’ll risk it all. Commit every asset they have. If the Fireflies start bragging about having a cure – and you know they will – those armies will come from every corner of the earth, however they can get here, no matter how long it takes, they _will_ come here, to this part of the world, to our backdoor. And when they do, they will swing that hammer. They will bring it down hard. Why wouldn’t they? The cure is the only thing of value left to all the pitiful FEDRAs of the world. They’re just like the Fireflies now. They don’t have anything left to lose. No one has. I hate to say it, but it may be that the only thing they’re waiting for is a reason. What if they’re looking for an excuse to go for broke? Put it all on the table, and finally give their people something to do! Give them an enemy they can fight again! Who knows, maybe they’ll finally set off the big bombs. You know the ones I mean. They’re still there, sealed up in their silos. Most of them have been forgotten or abandoned. But not all of them. Some of them haven’t rusted away. A few of them will still work when the people in charge give the order. And after all this suffering? After all these years of hardship with no end in sight? … Maybe they’re just looking for a reason, any reason, to finally turn out the lights on this broken world. Just turn out the lights… and go to sleep.”

Ellie shudders.

In a voice so low every ear had to strain, he speaks again.

“And that will be it. The end of it. The end of _us_. All of us… The end of everything.”

A longer silence follows. Not even the shuffling of hands in laps can be heard. Mark begins to stalk across the stage again, his voice louder than before.

“And why not? There’s no cause as great as the cure! No price too high for the cure! Sacrifice as many as you have to for the cure! Sacrifice everyone! Everything! Even the entire world, _if that’s what it takes!_ ” Copper proclaims this with his arms outstretched, encompassing the room, the town, the mountains, the whole world, and sitting in their benches, the people believe him. For one moment, this building could be a church and he its preacher, but Maria keeps town meetings out of the church. Something about the Constitution and following good laws, even in bad times. Ellie’s not too clear on that, but she doesn’t have time to think about it. Mark is speaking again, angry, glowering, shouting. He waves his hand dismissively.

“ _That_ is what the cure is worth. _Everything_. But finding the cure to _anything_ takes time, doesn’t it? And we all know the Fireflies don’t take time. They **won’t** take time! Because they never **have** the time! Never! That’s what they say, right? Move! Go! Hurry hurry hurry! They’re going to save the world! Save it now! Right now! No time to wait! No time to plan! _No time to do a single goddamn thing **right**!_ ”

A murmuring of grim affirmation. This crowd knows the shortcomings of the Fireflies well and Mark has given them a far easier subject to grapple with than the end of the world. Ellie, for her part, is doing her best to hide a smile between tucked lips, trying to remember if she has ever heard Dr. Copper use a swear word.

The scarf he always wears around his neck has started to work itself loose. Ellie can see very old, very ugly, pink and silver-white scar tissue peering out from behind the slack loops of red and black wool. The old wound seems to go all the way around his neck. It seems similar to the old scars encircling his wrists. She catches glimpses of them sometimes, just visible at the cuff of his sleeves when he is examining her. She didn’t know he had scars on his neck too. One day she hopes to work up the nerve to ask him about the strange, wide scars. She never will.

Mark has completed his trip across the stage. He is close to her again. He stands next to her, places one hand on her shoulder, presents her to the assembly not as an object of curiosity, but rather as though she is a colleague. She feels tiny and dorky, her face is red and she wants to be anywhere but the absolute center of attention again. Every important butthead in Jackson is here and all of them are looking at her. She swallows. She knows this speech is big and important, just like all the faces in the crowd, and she is paying attention. She really is. But her bladder is full. Her mouth is very dry. She wishes she had another sucker. Maybe a cherry flavored one this time.

“They had this girl,” Mark says, squeezing her shoulder. “ _This_ girl. Right _here_. Ellie Williams.”

She looks at her shoes.

“Nicest young lady you could ever meet,” he says.

She blushes, eyes still on her shoes. She smiles a little too, almost by reflex. Praise is always appreciated.

“Thanks,” she mumbles.

“And she’s immune.” Mark Copper looks at them, making eye contact with several of them, each in turn, making sure they see him. “Did you hear what I said? You’ve all heard it before today, I know you have. Everyone in town has heard it. Everyone who comes in my office with a runny nose or a splinter in their finger asks me about it. I don’t need to _say_ it… But I will… _Immune_. The first case of immunity I have _ever seen_.”

”Fireflies said there were others.” A lone voice. A weak, half-hearted protest. The merest mumble.

“Dozens,” someone adds, only a little louder. Joel’s story has had plenty of time to make the rounds. Ellie isn’t blushing anymore. She doesn’t want to get angry. She has enough problems with her bladder right now.

“Nevertheless, she’s the only immune person in _Jackson_ ,” Mark counters. “And we should be proud to have her! Jackson has everything! Isn’t that what we say? Electricity, democracy, and good food! That’s what we say, right! Well now we have Ellie Williams too. Electricity, democracy, good food, and immunity! All right here in Jackson!”

Tommy claps. Others quickly follow. Town pride blossoms almost as fast as the redness blooms on Ellie’s cheeks.

Mark squeezes her shoulders again. Energy pours off him like a torrent. Everyone can sense it. They stifle their applause so that he may continue. “The Fireflies had her for just a single day. What they should have done was treat her like royalty. Let her stay at their base! Protect her! Give her a big, private room, feed her ice cream every day, run tests, study the results and, most of all, take their time in doing it. But they didn’t. They had their hands on the goose that laid the golden eggs and they never realized it,” Mark says, so amazingly tall and proud next to Ellie. She straightens up too. She can’t be tall, but she can damn sure be proud. “And all because they were stupid enough to let her go.”

Ellie takes a deep breath. She knows deep deep down that’s there’s just no way the story is as simple as that, but that’s the one everybody believes. That’s the one Joel told them. That’s the one he told her. She stands there, as tall as she can make herself without getting on her tiptoes, and lets the lie stand for another day.

“They. Let. Her. _Go_.” Mark emphasizes each word. “They didn’t take the time to really study her. Who knows, maybe they never really studied any of the other cases of immunity they claim they’ve encountered. Hardly surprising. These are the _Fireflies_ we’re talking about after all. They probably gave up quickly when they didn’t find any obvious source of immunity in her blood – and believe me, they looked. I found several needle marks when I inspected her upon her arrival here. Blood samples. Skin samples. Nail samples. IV drip. Spinal tap. All the obvious stuff. I even found evidence of a sinus scraping inside her nose.”

“Ewww,” Ellie says and rubs her nose without meaning to. Everyone chuckles. She grins and finally looks at them, making eye contact with the crowd for the first time, unafraid. (Well, mostly unafraid).

_Tall and proud, Boo. Tall and proud._

Mark’s tone is matter-of-fact, stating the very obvious. “They didn’t find anything fast, so they stopped looking… and sent her on her way.”

With that, Mark walks away from her but she can stand on her own now, so it’s not too bad this time. With a few long, easy strides, Mark walks to the edge of the stage and looks down at Maria.

“The army always defeats the Fireflies because the Fireflies are impatient and reckless, while the army possesses proper training and discipline. And I tell you this, Mayor…”

He lets the pause hover in the air until every eye and ear is focused on him. Maria looks like she is holding her breath. Her blue eyes are wet, shimmering. After so many desperate, godawful years of doing everything she can to hold her small part of this ruined world together for just one more day, always just one more day, somehow, finally, against all odds, the moment her father spoke of so often has at long last arrived. She can sense it. Suddenly everyone in the room can sense it.

Salvation is at hand.

“… _I_ will do what the Fireflies could not,” Marks intones solemnly. “I will defeat Cordyceps the same way the army always defeats the Fireflies, and for the exact same reasons: I am trained. I am disciplined. I am patient. And because of that… And because of this girl… I. Will. _Succeed_.”

Maria begins to cry; her hands dart up to cover her face. Tommy begins to clap again. Everyone does. They all stand up. Even Maria, who doesn’t like getting up and down any more than necessary lately, being as round as a beach ball and due to deliver any day now. Her cheeks are wet. She is crying and smiling at the same time. Tommy hugs her as best he can, given the circumstances of her circumference. There is cheering, whooping. Ellie isn’t sure how much of it is for her and how much is for Mark, but she basks in all of it nonetheless. This is the good kind of attention.

“In the meantime,” Mark shouts to be heard over the roar, “this girl is no danger to _anyone_. Get the fuck over yourselves and show her how we welcome good people here in Jackson!”

People move towards the stage, towards Ellie. Smiles and open arms are everywhere. She can’t decide if she should weep for joy or run for her life.

Mark has already made his decision. He wants no part of the crowd. His invisible armor is coming apart rapidly, rent deeply with widening cracks and fissures that only he, and possibly Ellie, can see. The drugs are wearing off. The spell is about to be broken. He has to disappear before that happens. No one can know. No one can see.

Triumphantly, he makes a big show of putting the sucker stick in his mouth again. He smiles dazzlingly with his perfect white teeth. Cheers follow him as he struts off the far side of the stage, near the side door, and leaves the building without another word, a babbling, jubilant crowd in his wake. Ellie stands there, getting patted on the back by many hands, her feet rooted to the spot, with no idea what to do. She is smiling like a loon. A few years from now, not too long after Dr. Copper has killed himself on a perfect spring morning, Corinne will tell Ellie how he had strutted through the town like he owned the place, turning every head he passed. The people of Jackson had never seen such the impressive, cocksure side of squirelly ol’ Doctor Mark before. He left that town meeting, marched straight into his office, right past where she was sorting some case files, closed the door to his office without a word, hung his jacket on the peg, and vomited into the trash can, his nerves frayed beyond the breaking point by the unbearable strain of his incredible performance. He was sitting in his favorite chair, crying quietly into his shaking hands when Corinne came in to check on him. She never tells Ellie that last part. Corinne Erasmus is the only person in Jackson who knows why Mark Copper wears false teeth and how he got his horrible scars, the ones around his neck and wrists and ankles, the long, wicked ones across his back, the single letter burned deep in the flesh of his thigh, like a cattle brand. He only told her the story a single time, and Corinne takes that horrible tale to the grave, just as she swore she would.

In the town hall, Ellie is standing on the edge of the stage, bent at the waist, leaning down, talking to Maria, who is happy to leave the stairs to people less pregnant than she. Others cluster around Ellie, talking to her, welcoming her, apologizing, making amends. The din Mark left in his wake is just beginning to fade to a quiet roar when Joel finally comes barreling through the door, an exhausted, sweaty horse left in his wake, trying to catch its breath outside on the front lawn. It is a closed meeting but no one tries to stop him as he charges through the crowd, towards the stage, leaping up to it in a single bound. He wraps Ellie up in a protective bear hug and glowers at everyone who dares to share the stage with his precious girl.

“Hi, Joel,” she says as though this is no big deal and people line up to see her on stage all time. “I thought you were at the dam?”

“I was,” he says to the girl slowly melting in his arms. “I just got word about this… this… secret meeting bullshit. You okay? You alright?”

“I’m fine,” she says, hugging him back. “Everything’s good.”

“Tommy!” he shouts to his brother, who is standing over by Lonny Munroe and a few others, all former Fireflies. “What the hell? What is all this?”

“Town meeting,” Tommy says, coming up on the stage, using both the stairs and his indoor voice, unlike his older brother. “All the big wheels in town were summoned. Dr. Copper wanted to put folks’ minds at ease about Ellie. Seems like he did.”

Joel still can’t find his indoor voice. “Why didn’t you say somethin’ about it to me?”

“Didn’t know he was gonna do it today,” Tommy shrugs. “Supposed to be a week or two from now. Then he moved up the date all of a sudden.”

“But you did know they were gonna make some kind of decision about her.” One of Joel’s arms slips free from her. His hand becomes a fist.

“Joel,” Ellie says, tugging his shirt, looking up at him with pleading eyes. _Please don’t ruin the moment._ “It’s okay. I swear.”

Tommy doesn’t quail. This wouldn’t be the first time he has fought with his brother. Likely it won’t be the last. Joel has always been the older brother, but now he is older in a different way than he used to be. Always taller than Tommy, sure, but he is aging, and the younger brother is much faster and filled with the stamina of a man almost ten years younger than Joel. A fight between them could go either way now.

“Decision wasn’t exactly about her, Joel,” Tommy says. “But he wanted her on stage to make his point.”

Joel’s eyes are hard. Ellie is his responsibility, not anyone eles’s. Not even Tommy’s.

“It’s okay,” Ellie repeats. “Really. It all worked out. See? Everybody’s happy. Heck, people might start asking for my autograph any second now.”

_Joke. Defuse the situation. Tell him the one about the elephant and the prostitute if you have to._

“We’re gonna talk about this later,” Joel says to Tommy, his jaw set.

Tommy shrugs. “I was plannin’ on tellin’ you, Joel. The way Copper talked about it day before yesterday, he made it sound like it was gonna be weeks or months before he was sure enough of his findings to say anything. Guess he finally had some kind of breakthrough. He threw this meeting together real last minute, y’know?”

“What did he find?” Joel’s curiosity overcomes his cooling anger.

Tommy speaks like the news he is about to deliver is casual, backyard talk. “The cure. Maybe.”

“Jesus.” Joel’s mood changes instantly. “Really?”

“Well, not right away, exactly. But Doc said things look real promisin’. In the meantime, he finally convinced everyone that ol’ Sven here ain’t a cute little clicker in disguise.” Tommy reaches out and gives Ellie’s shoulder a good waggle, getting a big grin from her in return. “She ain’t gonna infect anyone by slobberin’ on ‘em.”

“Hell’s bells,” Joel says, deflating, relaxing, smiling, just a little. “I’ve known that for a long time.”

Ellie giggles and blushes, hiding her face against Joel’s arm for a quick moment. “Joel! Shh! What happens at the Motel 6 stays at the Motel 6, remember?”

Blindsided by the unexpected admission of what he’s long suspected about these two, Tommy giggles too, but it’s a very manly giggle, the kind they have down in Texas.

“You should’ve seen it, Joel,” she says. “Doctor Copper put on one hell of a show.”

“He sure did. Everything’s gonna be alright now. I’m sure of it,” Tommy says, clasping Joel’s shoulder. Joel nods back, mollified. There’s peace between them again.

You would’ve fucked it up, Ellie doesn’t say to Joel.

_You would’ve started shouting and throwing punches and then we would’ve been kicked out of Jackson or else you would’ve stormed out and I would’ve had to go with you and we’d be living outdoors again and that shit would really suck. You mean well, I know you do. And I still love you, I guess. And I want to forgive you but you just make it so damn hard sometimes._

He hugs her tighter. His chin rests on the crown of her head. She presses her face into his flannel shirt. He smells like wood varnish and sweaty horse.

_You make it pretty easy sometimes too._

“I really like this shirt you got me,” she murmurs into his chest. “It’s cute.”

“I was hopin’ you would.”

 

* * *

 

“Maria tells me you’ve been working on the new town wall?”

Doctor Copper is brittle and reserved, back to his old ways. Ellie will never see the old, commanding Mark again. He is gone for good, drowned by time and trauma. But the quiet, odd Mark she still has in her life has always been her favorite anyway.

“Yeah,” Ellie chirps brightly. “Joel and Tommy put in a good word for me with the mayor.”

At the back of the room, Corinne laughs. “It’s always who you know.”

“Yeah. I’m connected.” Ellie snickers. It feels weird to have important friends. “I needed a job and the work’s pretty simple. It’s hard work, I mean. But it’s not complicated. I mostly just carry tools to people and haul buckets of sand and gravel around while the other guys move the wheelbarrows and hammer all the wood together and stuff. I’m pretty pooped at the end of the shift, but it gets me out of the house. Keeps me busy, I guess.”

“Yes. It’s not good for anyone to have too much free time on their hands,” Copper says. Depression can become crippling quickly. Mark Copper knows this for a fact. Ellie needs to stay busy, just like he does. Keep running, just as long as you can. You can’t let the ghosts catch you. They will, sooner or later, but you have to run as fast and as far as you can. You have to make them work for it. They will catch Mark very soon, just as he suspects, but today he is still ahead of them, if only barely, and that is good enough. “Definitely better to stay busy, Ellie.”

“I guess so,” she answers. She doesn’t feel that she’s contributing all that much to the effort, though everyone tells her she’s a big help. And it does feel good to be out in the sun instead of cooped up in her room all day. It’s grungy work. She wears long sleeves and gloves at the site. Everybody on the team does, so she doesn’t feel out of place. Most of them are friendly too, or maybe they’re just pretending to be. Like her old horse, Ellie does her best to be an optimist. “Oh! And I get paid at the end of the week. My first real payday. And I can start paying my bills to the hospital and stop being a charity case for you.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Ellie,” Copper says with a faint smile. “My salary is paid by the town, as are the cost of the experiments I’m running. If anything, it might be more accurate to say I should be the one paying you. The work I’ve done with the samples you’ve provided so far has been… well… intriguing, I suppose is the best word for it.”

“Really?”

“I can’t help but speculate what a missed opportunity you were for the Fireflies,” he says, scribbling notes. “If only they’d held on to you for a proper battery of tests rather than just hurrying you on your way, they’d have seen how truly unique you are. Even if there are other cases of immunity out there, I can say with certainty that your particular form of immunity is unique to you. Perhaps I’ll call it Cordyceps Elliewilliamsus… or something like that.” He smiles faintly, connecting with her through humor, barely holding his world together, hanging in there for one more day.

She giggles and grins goofily, swinging her legs from the edge of the examination table. She looks out the window, embarrassed for some reason. She still doesn’t believe Joel’s story was entirely true, but every day that passes makes it easier for her to pretend.

 

* * *

 

Ellie dreams of Riley and lipstick. Ruby red. Riley applies each stroke carefully to Ellie’s plump lips. Their faces are so close as Riley works, leaning in, close enough to kiss. Ellie wants to plant a big, sloppy, wet smooch right on Riley’s tempting, luscious, red mouth, but she can’t because then Riley would know that Ellie likes her in that way, and that would be no good because everybody knows that Riley likes boys.

Ellie wakes up happy and sad at the same time.

Soon she will fall asleep again, her face pressed into a pillow made wet by bittersweet tears. In the meantime, she sings as softly as she can, serenading ghosts hovering unseen in the deepest shadows of the cozy little room.

“Staring at the ceiling in the dark…”

 

* * *

 

Tommy and Joel are in the backyard. Ellie is in the kitchen, filling glasses with beer poured from a cold pitcher. Maria is in her bedroom, lying down for a short nap. The baby is napping, so Maria has to take advantage of the opportunity to get a little sleep too. Through the screen door at the back of the kitchen, Ellie can hear the brothers talking.

“Sarah woulda loved it here.”

“You’re right about that,” Tommy says. “She had that friend in… where was it… the one with the house out in the sticks. Big backyard. Remember?”

“Lucy Maxwell,” Joel says, the memory coming back to him. “She lived out in Fayetteville. Man, Sarah loved going to that girl’s house. She’d run around that backyard catching fireflies. She’d always come home with a mayonnaise jar full of the things.”

“Yeah. She’d let them go after a day or two, hopin’ they’d take up residence at your place,” Tommy chuckles softly, remembering the girl and the world that are both long gone. “But they never did.”

“They never did,” Joel muses, smiling warmly, his eyes faraway. “But she never gave up hope. Sarah must’ve brought a hundred of those things home, one jar at a time. Always convinced that she could have as big of a lightshow outside her window as Lucy did.”

“Sarah was a real good kid, Joel. Sweetest kid I ever knew.”

“She sure was.” Joel inhales deeply. “She’d really like it here, I think.”

“Yeah. Lots of fireflies in these woods.”

The brothers sit in silence now, each alone with his own thoughts.

Ellie pauses inside the back door, and takes a deep breath before stepping outside. She can’t cry. She can’t. She mustn’t. She waits until she’s certain she won’t.

The screen door swings open.

“Who wants a cold beer?” she says brightly, a big glass in each of her small hands.

“I do,” both men say at once, happy, content, at peace, each in their own way.

 

* * *

 

It’s Sunday. Her day off. The sheets are warm and soft around her. She snuggles into his pillow. It smells like him. She tugs the sheet up to her neck and thinks about rolling over and going back to sleep. The big bed feels so good on a cool autumn morning. She has the house to herself this week. Joel is in Fort Washakie, part of Jackson’s most recent ‘good neighbors’ trip to the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes on the other side of the mountain, in the Wind River Basin. Ellie wanted to go so bad that she practically groveled, but it did no good. Rules are rules. She isn’t sixteen yet. She had to stay.

_It’s not fair. I wanted to meet some Indians. That woulda been so cool._

But his trip gave her the opportunity to finally sleep in Joel’s big bed. It was even better than she imagined it could be.

_I’m sleeping in here tonight too. And tomorrow night. I’m gonna play with myself too. If Joel doesn’t like it, too damn bad. He’ll never find out. He’s not the only one who can keep a fucking secret._

_Gonna leave my panties in your bed too, you butt._

She giggles into the pillow, muting the sound.

_I ought to leave them down there under the blankets. Just to fuck with him. Next time he changes his sheets, he’ll be all like ‘how in tarnation did Ellie’s underwear wind up in my big dang bed?’_

She laughs, stretches, rolls onto her back, stares up at the ceiling, sits up, holds the blanket around her, takes in the room. She comes in here so rarely. This is Joel’s room, not hers.

_We shouldn’t have our own rooms. We should have this room, together. That’s the way it was supposed to be. But that didn’t work out, did it? Things just don’t work out sometimes, I guess._

A little picture frame containing Sarah’s photo is on his dresser. Ellie bought him that frame. She didn’t tell him what it was for but he knew anyway. Joel only owns one picture. He thanked her for it. Ellie looks at the picture. She tries to imagine what Joel’s life was like when he was a young father.

_He says it was hard sometimes. Too much month left at the end of his money, or something like that. But he had Sarah and a world full of people. Movies and TV and music. New stuff, not old like it is today. He had drive-ins and hot dogs and ice cream, the lucky duck. He had it so good and didn’t even know it._

_He’s so young. Cute. Look how happy he is… how happy she is. The world was about to blow up and nobody suspected a thing._

She sighs.

_I wished I’d met you, Sarah. You’d be about Maria’s age, I think._

“I bet Joel’s right. I bet we would’ve been friends.”

_But that didn’t work out either._

If Sarah’s ghost holds a grudge about the future stolen from her or the girl who’s sleeping in her dad’s bed, she gives no indication.

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t know the name of the note but it’s achingly beautiful to her ears. It’s late and she needs to get some sleep. Maria will expect her on the work team bright and early in the morning, barefoot and ankle deep in the muddy banks of the Gros Ventre River that runs along the edge of town. The easy work of clearing the site of rocks and sticks is done. It’s serious business there now. It’s going to be a long, hard day of work tomorrow, she knows. But the beat up old guitar in her lap is too exciting. She plucks another string and a different note rises up from the hollow box of the body. There are six strings. She tries them all, one by one. She doesn’t use the pick Joel left on the edge of her bed. She wants to feel the steel strings. She uses her fingers. There’s dirt beneath her nails, to deep to scrub out with a washcloth. Clay, mud, grit from the riverbanks. Sifted and sieved, aged, mixed with a little sand, she’s been making it into bricks all week, pushing the goopy stuff into long, squat, wooden molds, a dozen slots to a frame, a dozen bricks ready to dry on the shelves of the special sheds that Joel and Tommy and the other men on the construction team have built just for the bricks being made by the wall team. They builders are almost finished putting the giant kiln together, just down the river from the big waterwheels that power the grain mills. The kiln appears to Ellie like a colossal beehive and she likes to look at it and daydream while she dusts the wet bricks with sand so they won’t stick to the molds. In another day or two, all the bricks they’ve made will go in the kiln, hundreds and hundreds of them, where they will bake for several days. When the bricks have cooled, a bunch of the men in town will be hired to start building the new town wall while Ellie and the other, less muscular members of the wall team will start making the next batch of bricks. The project will take two or three years, most likely, but Jackson is a town with a long future ahead of it.

It makes her feel good to be part of something so big. She can lose herself in the job, take her mind off other things, the sort of things she can’t do anything about, and just be part of something bigger. Not as big as saving the whole world, she knows, but something pretty damn big all the same. Sergeant Parker, the man in charge of town security, designed the wall. There’s a big drawing of his plan hanging on the bulletin board in Maria’s office. Parker has never been satisfied with the ad hoc sheet metal and barbed wire wall that encircles the town. It’s too flimsy, he says. This new wall will be better, safer. It was going to be two walls actually, thick and tall, with a gap between them that will be filled up with gravel and sand all the way to the top, and then bricked over, closing it up. A wall like that will stop just about anything short of a grenade launcher, he says. Ellie wants to believe him. She wants to be safe here. She wants to grow old here. She had given a lot of thought to running away before, but she has a lot of friends here now, and the guitar in her hands finally pushes the last, lingering remnants of those thoughts from her mind.

Now the idea of trying to make it to Salt Lake City or the Big Darby Nature Preserve or the old Motel 6 suddenly seems stupid, the kind of thing a dumb kid would do, like running away on a stolen horse with no destination in mind and no map either, trusting to fate or guardian angels or luck or any of the other things she isn’t sure she believes in anymore.

She smiles sadly.

_And now Tommy is trying to hook Joel up with some lady named Esther._

_There goes my hopes of a three-way with him and Tommy now, I guess._

She snickers softly to the empty room. It is a melancholy sound.

_Four-way, assuming Maria would be cool with it. Which she was going to be as soon as I worked up the nerve to add her to the fantasy. Getting naked with the mayor is kind of intimidating, even in my head._

The Walkman earbuds lying on the armrest of the swivel chair are forgotten. She continues to pick at the guitar strings. This is better music than anything on any of her tapes. This is _her_ music. She plucks the smallest string over and over and smiles. A high, fragile, lovely note reverberates from the hole in the acoustic guitar.

A stuffed toy giraffe lies on her bed, resting against the pillow. It cost her forty cents at the town general store. She bought it with the earnings from her first payday. She didn’t want Joel teasing her about it so she told him that it’s just for decoration. She told him she doesn’t sleep with it or anything dumb like that. She insists she’s too old to ever sleep with a stuffed animal. She isn’t. Secretly, she cuddles it to her neck every night. She loves that little giraffe. She paid for her (it’s a her, of course, Ellie is certain of it) with money she earned from hard work, so she can do whatever she wants with it. Andy, the man who runs the general store, says he’ll keep his eyes open for any garden gnomes that come his way. She’s saving up for one of those too. She going to name him Waffles. Or Sven. Or maybe something else. She’s not sure yet. She’ll have to see the gnome first before she can pick out a name for him. The adorable girl-giraffe has a name too, but Ellie will never tell anyone what it is. It’s her secret. Everybody should have at least one secret.

She smiles and plucks another note. It’s not as pure and clear as the previous one. She tries to remember where her fingers were when she made that good note. She kicks at the floor with her toes and spins her office chair around in a slow circle. She can’t wait to learn how to play this guitar.

_This is a good place. I have a home here, if I want it._

The future is in her hands. The present is all around her. The past is a memory.

_This thing between me and Joel can work out. If I want it to happen._

_If I’ll just let it happen._

Ellie strums all the strings with a swipe of her hand. It makes an amazingly full sound. She knows what to do. She nods to her giraffe.

_Okay._

**. . .**

 

Her footsteps are light and almost silent on the stairs. Joel is sitting on the old sofa, a well-thumbed paperback book in his hands, a western of some kind – it’s all he ever reads, tales of cowboys and outlaws and six-guns pulled from leather holsters as fast as greased lightning and almost always one sleazy, very detailed sex scene in each book (Ellie always checks for those. It’s not her fault he leaves them lying around the house!). He turns to look at her as she arrives at the bottom of the staircase. The guitar he gave her just a half hour ago is still in her hands.

_We can make this work, Joel. Whatever happened before, it doesn’t matter. We can make this work._

“How the heck do you play this thing?” she smiles as endearingly as she can, wanting things between them to be like old times again, trying hard to find her way back to that invisible groove that used to fit them so perfectly.

“Kinda late for a lesson,” Joel says, sliding over to make room for her on the couch. “But I reckon you talked me into it.”

She smiles and laughs, just a little, very cutely, and settles in next to him, pleasantly warm against his side. It feels like old times.

_We can make this work. You don’t need Esther._

“Lemme show you how to play an A chord,” he says. “That one’s real easy. Good place to start.”

_You don’t need her._

“Listen, I…” she says suddenly, not letting go of the guitar as he reaches for it. She falls silent. She doesn’t mean to. She can’t find the words for some reason.

_You just need me._

His voice is low and reassuring. Patient. That tone she misses so dearly. He wants to make everything better for her, perfect for her.

“Everything’s gonna be fine, Ellie. We got a good home here. There’s food in the pantry and the roof don’t leak and that’s a fine end to any day. That’s what my grandma used to say.”

“Yeah… I… I know we haven’t talked much lately,” she says, choosing her words with great care. “I’ve… had a lot to think about. You know?”

“I can understand that,” he says and she feels that he might really mean it. “You’ve been through a lot. You’ve seen more of the bad side of this world than any girl your age ought to.”

“Yeah. Well…” More silence follows. Where did all her words go? She had so many of them just a minute ago.

He rests his chin on the top of her head and she snuggles into him.

_We can make this work._

“Everything’s gonna be fine, Ellie. You’ll see.”

_Whatever happened… whatever you did in Salt Lake City… you did it for me…_

_And I love you for it._

They sit that way for a while. She wants to sit with him like this forever. But it’s getting late. Outside, three-quarters of the streetlights wink out like they do every night at 10 pm, a power-saving measure to allow the men working the night shift at the dam to take some of the dynamos off-line for a while, saving the machinery a little wear and tear, allowing the men to do some light maintenance. The dam won’t last forever, that’s why the waterwheels were built, and why Hauser and the other engineers are already brainstorming alternative sources of power. But that’s a worry for tomorrow.

_Riley was wrong about one thing. Tomorrow isn’t always a lie._

_Sometimes, tomorrow is the best damn thing there is._

“That’ll do for today,” Joel says, and pats Ellie’s belly, something he used to do when they were on the long road from their old home to their new one, huddling near the campfire, just the two of them under the ancient ocean of stars. She remembers that it’s a signal for her to get up and get to bed.

_Crap! Gotta stall for time!_

She twists, wiggles against him, fishes some money out of her jeans pocket. She has a plastic jack-o-lantern in her room that she’s turned into a piggy bank of sorts. Every Friday she gets paid in these funny aluminum and bronze disks, each one stamped with a fancy ‘J’, the official currency of Jackson, Wyoming. Most of the aluminum chits have one or more holes punched in them, the bronze chits are solid and all have been struck with Roman numerals. She is still trying to remember what all the little markings mean. She usually buys a little knick-knack at the general store when they go shopping on Saturday evening. Joel doesn’t maker her buy food or clothes. He won’t let her. It’s his job to take care of stuff like that, he insists. So she saves most of her money like Maria suggested. It’s slowly adding up, just like the mayor told her it would. She grabbed a handful of the funny little metal bits on her way down here to the sofa, setting up a joke she only now just remembers.

“Here. My share of the rent,” she teases, bouncing her open hand, making the money jangle in her palm.

“‘Bout damn time,” he mock-grumbles. “Gettin’ tired of payin’ all your damn bills.”

He reaches for the money in her outstretched hand and she shrieks and pulls it away from him.

“Dude! I was _joking!_ ”

“You think the food and electricity is free?” he smirks, reaching for the money hidden inside her little fist. “Did you know Jackson has a residency fee for everybody who’s sixteen or older? I got _bills_ , girl.”

She squeals and sticks her tongue out, blowing a raspberry at him. She pulls her fist to her stomach, covering it protectively with her other hand. “Don’t be such a greedy butthead! You make seven dollars a week! You don’t need any of my piddly little stash! And I’m only fifteen. I shouldn’t have to pay taxes. It’s not right!”

“Man, do I know that feelin’,” Joel laughs gently. “And I make six dollars and fifty cents, thank you. And I spend most of it feedin’ you and payin’ for all the hot water you use. How many baths does one girl need? One every couple of months ought to do it.”

“Pfft! Whatever. You bring in more than I do! I’m busting my ass and freezing my poor feet off in cold mud all day long for a measly thirty cents a shift,” she grumps. “That’s not even three lousy dollars a week! I’m thinking about selling matches on the street corners when winter gets here. Maybe bring in a little extra cash, you know?”

“Learn a trade and you’ll make better money,” he chuckles, tousling her loose hair.

“Hmf! I’d be working as a nurse right now if the people of Jackson didn’t still have their heads up their asses about some things,” she grouses, leaning back against him, the guitar across her lap, her bottom hovering above the sofa as she lifts her body up, her hand shoving the coins back into her pocket. “Corinne told me she makes eight dollars a week. _Eight!_ Gah! I wish I did. Nurse Ellie’d be living in style. I’d have my own horse. And a real giraffe too.”

He chuckles, settles his arm around her waist and she sighs contentedly. Her plan to keep him on the couch has worked. She smiles. Her green and brown camouflage-patterned shirt is thin. She toys with the notion of pulling the blanket down from the back of the sofa.

“I’ve been workin’ somethin’ out with Tommy,” Joel says. “Could be that I can get you a job interview next week.”

“Oh yeah? Doing what?” she asks, twisting around to look up at him. She has forgotten how nice it is to be held by him. It feels good to be reminded. “You’re not selling me into prostitution this soon, are you?”

He knuckles her belly and she shrieks, giggling.

“You’re already making thirty cents a day. Why would I want you to put you in a job where you’d earn less?” he chides.

“OH! You _dick!_ ” she cackles and smacks his thigh with her fist.

He chuckles and pulls her in a little closer.

“So…” she begins after a few cozy minutes. “What’s the job? Do I have to kill anybody?”

“Floyd Cooper’s oldest boy, Daryl? He’s about to turn sixteen and Maria’s gonna hire him full time for the road and fence patrol. Boy’s got eyes like a hawk, they say.”

“Road and fence patrol,” she repeats, her brow furrowed, thinking. “Those are the guys riding horses around all the cattle and pig pastures, right?”

“Yeah,” Joel says. “Daryl’s been working for Burt the last few years and now that he’s movin’ on, Burt’s gonna need to hire a new stable hand.”

Ellie sits up excitedly. “Stables? I’ll be working with horses and stuff?”

“Assumin’ you can charm Burt, yeah.”

“Charm? Dude, I _ooze_ charm. I leave a big trail of it everywhere I go.” She leans in, whispering, her voice conspiratorial. “That’s what those weird stains in the carpet are.”

Joel laughs, his heart less heavy than usual. She is his little oddball again and it feels good. It feels right.

“You say that,” Joel says, “But Burt’s not exactly sold on the notion yet. You need to make a real good impression on the old guy tomorrow, Ellie.”

Her voice shoots up half an octave in alarm. “What? Why? Does he want to hire somebody else? Shit. How many people are lining up for this job? Will you help me polish my r _é_ sum _é_? I’ll need at least two references and a letter from my parole officer.”

Joel knuckles her stomach again, making her squeal and slap at his hand.

“I’m serious, Ellie. Pay attention. Burt’s never met you. He’s kind of an odd duck, to tell the truth. He’ll talk your leg off if you give him half a chance. But he’s kind of particular about how he runs his stable. And he only knows you as the girl who stole a horse from the dam crew last year.”

“I gave him back! It was _you_ who didn’t return the horse _you_ took!”

“That’s sorta beside the point,” Joel says.

“Ugh,” she grunts, flopping back against him. “I was a whole different person back then! And it was Bad Ellie’s idea to take the horse and run away. Why am I always paying for her crimes?”

“It sure is a mystery,” he sighs sympathetically. “A terrible, terrible injustice.”

“Damn right,” she snorts. She stretches against him sensuously, unfolding like a cat. “How much does being a stable hand pay? Better than making bricks, I hope.”

“Three dollars and a quarter a week. That’s what Tommy told me.” He rubs her belly. She likes it. When he stops, she takes his hand and waggles it, letting him know he should continue with the rubbing. He does.

“Not bad. A dollar more than I’m making now.”

“And you’ll get to work with horses all day,” Joel says. “I’ve been to the stables a few times. He’s got a bunch of horses over there, lemme tell you. Twenty or thirty, I think, and a few new ones comin’ along every spring. People are always signin’ them out for one job or another. It’ll keep you busy, I can promise you that.”

“What does a stable hand do exactly?”

“Feed ‘em. Brush ‘em. Tend to ‘em. Clean up after ‘em.”

“Clean up? You mean shoveling poop?”

“Yeah. I suspect you’ll do a _lot_ of that, girl.” He chuckles and it vibrates through her pleasingly. “But I told him you’re a hard worker and you’re crazy about horses.”

“I love ‘em enough to steal ‘em,” she snickers.

“I wouldn’t bring that up when you talk to him,” he remarks dryly.

She giggles and snuggles against him, curling her legs up on the couch. She wants to take her socks off and cuddle under the blanket. She wishes he’d rub her feet like he did that first day they hiked up the mountain after the El Camino broke down and she was sure her feet were going to snap off at the ankles before Joel would let her stop and make camp.

“How much did you make back in the old days?” she asks. “When you were working construction in Texas?”

“Oh, as I recall it was over six or seven hundred dollars on a good week, easy.”

“Ffffuck,” she whispers in awe. “Man, we’d be _rich_. We’d rule this town!”

“Money was a lot different back then, kiddo. Didn’t go nearly as far as it does here in Jackson. I paid about five Jackson dollars for that guitar. Twenty years ago, even a cheap one would run you fifty bucks American, at least. A good one would run upwards of a thousand dollars or more.”

She makes a quizzical sound and considers that for a while.

_That’s almost a whole week’s pay he spent on this thing._

She reaches out and picks up the guitar, studying it closely, the full weight of the purchase settling on her.

_Wow. I don’t even know what to say._

“You spent that much on me?” she smiles beautifully, almost glowing.

“Figure you probably didn’t get too many presents growin’ up,” he shrugs. “And I promised you I’d teach you how to play one of these days. Besides, I’m makin’ good money workin’ on the repair team. And the money from all them extra nights of volunteerin’ for watchtower duty are addin’ up too. Plus I got nearly ten bucks for going on that trip to Fort Washakie.”

She hugs the guitar to her chest and smiles. He combs her hair back over her ears.

“You promised me you’d teach me how to swim too. Don’t forget,” she murmurs happily.

“I will. Next Saturday, I’ll take the day off and we’ll sneak out and go down the river a ways, where we can be alone.”

_Alone? I like the sound of that._

“You mean it, Joel?”

“That’s a promise, Peaches.”

_Peaches? He’s never called me that before._

She smiles, warmed from head to toe.

_Peaches are his favorite treat. And neither one of us owns a swimsuit… so…_

She grins and blushes and squeezes her thighs together discreetly.

“Cool… Did they have money in Boston?” she asks, not daring to mention the new nickname, afraid that if she does, he might never call her by it again. “I don’t remember seeing any. But I didn’t get out of the prep school very often and I never made it down to the black markets. Too risky, even for a wild child like me.”

“Nah. Money was being used as insulation to fill the gaps around windows in the winter. People traded ration cards instead. People didn’t get to pick their jobs either. FEDRA assigned you one. We’re damn lucky we got away from that place, Ellie. You got options here you never woulda had back there.”

She thinks in silence for a while.

_I have options. Never had those before._

_So does Joel._

_He was a carpenter before. And now he’s a carpenter again. I guess it’s what he likes to do._

“Six and a half dollars a week,” she muses. “Is that a pretty good salary for Jackson? Are we doing okay?”

“Sure. Carpenters and mechanics make good money here. Our skills are in demand. Hauser and the engineers at the dam make a lot more than I do, of course, ‘cause they’re the only ones in this whole town who know how that damn thing works.”

Ellie giggles. “‘Dam thing’. Pun! Hee hee.”

He chuckles and continues. “Esther’s a teacher. Tommy told me she makes somewhere between four and five dollars a week.”

Ellie winces at the mention of Esther. Earlier tonight, when he had given her the guitar, Joel mentioned that Tommy had pulled a few strings to get Joel and Esther posted together on watchtower duty next week. Ellie is too old for school in this town. She’s fifteen. Education stops at twelve. Kids here get just the basics, really, or so she’s heard. She’s never been inside the town’s little schoolhouse. She doesn’t know Esther. She wonders if the woman is pretty. She hopes not. She tries to move the conversation away from the mystery woman as subtly as she can.

“So… How much did brick squishers like me make back then?”

“Knew a guy who was a bricklayer for a big outfit. He made somethin’ around forty thousand dollars a year, if I remember correctly.”

“Holey moley! Forty thou- … Man, I am getting _ripped off_ ,” she exclaims. “Maria’s a fucking slave driver. Working for the city sucks balls.”

“Working for the government used to be some of the best payin’, most stable jobs a person could get. Still is,” he yawns. “The guys who volunteer to go on the scroungin’ runs outside the city walls get something like twelve bucks up front plus three bucks a day from Maria and the bank. That’s where all of Tommy’s money came from. That’s why I took that job ridin’ shotgun to Idaho Falls. He told me that him and Parker used to lead a team down to Pinedale or Rock Springs once or twice a month to look for all kinds of stuff. Went all the way to Casper a few times. Brought some farm equipment back from there. This was back before he became a dad, of course. He prefers to stick close to home now. But all that ‘danger pay’ made my little brother a pretty rich man. By Jackson standards, I mean. He’s got a big savings account at the bank.”

“He rode all the way to Texas too,” she reminded him.

“That was on his own dime,” Joel says. “Did you know he married Maria when he got back from Texas? He knew she’d never let him make the trip once she had her hooks in him.”

“Makes sense,” Ellie mumbles into his chest. “We girls have to keep you boys from acting too stupid.”

Joel’s body goes rigid with a ripple of laughter kept safely inside. He knows a woman, even a young one like Ellie, doesn’t need to be encouraged about those sorts of thoughts.

_Just the right amount of stupid is kind of sexy though._

She nuzzles closer and says nothing. She doesn’t want Joel going on dangerous trips like that, not without her watching his back, at least. Her body is warming up to him. It’s been a while. She’s missed his touch, his deep, rumbly voice, the smell of his skin. She’s forgotten how light and buttery he can make her feel. There’s a wonderful sense of weightlessness forming in her stomach. He plays with her hair and she wants to poof away in a happy cloud of freckles and guitar notes.

“C’mon. Time for bed,” he murmurs. “We’ll start the guitar lessons tomorrow.”

She grumbles wordlessly but he’s not taking ‘no’ for an answer tonight. He sits up, forcing her to do the same.

“Unnf,” she protests to no avail.

He follows her up the stairs. She goes into her room to change into her nightclothes. He is bare-chested and brushing his teeth when she comes into the bathroom, her legs on display, wearing one of his old, black t-shirts and a pair of socks too worn out for daily wear but still warm enough to sleep in. Nights can get chilly in Jackson, even in the waning weeks of summer.

She works the wet bristles of her toothbrush into the white dune of baking soda inside the rubbermaid container he holds out for her. He seals the lid shut on the little box and makes room for her to stand beside him at the sink. He rinses off his brush and drops it in the chipped coffee mug they share as a toothbrush holder.

“So how much did prostitutes bring in on an average night in Texas?” she asks. “I wanna know what I should expect to make once you put your evil plan in place and start pimping me out.”

“Well, lemme think,” Joel says, spitting and rinsing with a mouthful of clean water from the short, yellow, plastic cup they share. “As I recall… I usually charged the ladies of Austin around forty dollars a go for my services.”

Ellie snorts and almost chokes on the white froth in her mouth.

“That went up my nose, you dick!” she cough-laughs, shoving him out the door. He was leaving anyway but she helps him on his way.

She watches him from the bathroom door as he crosses the hallway and opens the door to his bedroom.

_Fuck, he looks good without a shirt._

“Hey. I’ve got almost three dollars saved up,” she says teasingly, hopefully. “How much will that buy me?”

“Sorry. Pros like me don’t clock in for pocket change.” His glimmering, hooded eyes tantalize her, making her feel invisible fingers dancing all over her skin when he speaks. “Come back when you’ve got some serious money, girl. I’ll see if I can pencil you in my calendar somewhere. But no promises, yeah? I’m a busy, busy man.”

“I’m an orphan! Don’t I qualify for charity? And I’m a fucking _virgin_ , you asshole. Shouldn’t I get a discount or a coupon or something?”

He’s got one foot through his bedroom doorway now and she’s brushing as fast as she can. She wants to dash across the hallway and leap into his arms.

“What’s that you said, Peaches? I should charge you extra for lessons?”

“Fuhhk yooh!” she chortles, trying to speak while brushing her teeth, trying not to choke again. She’s trying to finish. She wants him to carry her to his bed. She’s horny. It’s the first time her body has burned for him with this wonderful fire in months.

He’s stepping through the doorway; the conversation is about to end. Ellie spits as quickly as she can, managing to get most of it in the sink. She’s frantic.

“Wait! Hold up!” She swishes a cupful of water around her mouth and makes an even larger mess when she frantically spits it out. “How much are you charging Esther?”

“As good as that woman looks? Half price,” he smirks, and closes the door, leaving her standing at the threshold of the bathroom, toothbrush dangling from her numb fingers, her mouth agape in shock. Her pussy is tingling with jealous excitement and her nipples are stabbing at the front of her shirt.

She can hear him chuckle from behind the door before his heavy footsteps carry him out of earshot and towards his unseen bed.

_I’m not jealous. I’m not jealous. I AM NOT JEALOUS!_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are at long last! Just four long chapters (they’ll get shorter and shorter with each installment), and Flying to Wyoming will be done.
> 
> So let’s address something odd about this volume: Why the change of tense? Well, you might have noticed that when I flashback to Ellie and Riley and their days in the dorm, it’s always written in the present tense. I did this for two reasons. First, to make those flashbacks notably different from the regular story. Second, to give the reader a sense of immediacy (and safety, but more on that in a bit). Since The Last of Us is, in hindsight, largely Ellie’s story, and most established writers agree that it is harder to write complex characters in the present tense, using it adds an element of simplicity to the characters and their world. Time isn’t as elastic in the present tense as it can be in the past tense. Both the character and the reader are experiencing the same moment together when you use the present tense. I chose it for Ellie’s flashbacks because I wanted to try and create a sense of safety and security for her. She may not appreciate it, rebellious teenager that she is, but she is safe at the military academy. She always has a place to sleep and her meals are provided for her. Remember, she didn’t know about the food shortages in Boston; the military takes care of its own, even lowly cadets. Rationing is for lowly civilians like Joel. Ellie is taken care of at that point in her life. She is safe. So I tried to cordon off that part of her story from the rest of this tale by using the change of tense – even with the later parts of her story where the safety has vanished and she has to seek out the Fireflies (I decided to keep those bits in the same present tense for the sake of consistency). With the exception of the Sarah flashback, Joel is never safe in the past, so I stuck with the past tense, just like the main story. But in Jackson, both Joel and Ellie are finally safe, and I wanted to express that by using the present tense again. Also, after writing half a million words in the past tense, shifting to the present tense has been a real pain in the ass. My brain rebels against me behind my back. I proofread a paragraph only to find the verb tense slowly, somewhat randomly, inching its way back to the familiar past tense. Very frustrating.
> 
> Did Ellie want to die? I don’t think so. I don’t think Marlene was all that certain either (or maybe she lacked the courage to take the chance). However, if the Fireflies had bothered to wake Ellie up and ask her if she were willing to die for the cure, I think she would have said yes. Ellie was dealing with an incredible mix of guilt and trauma by the time she finally reached Salt Lake City. The driving force in her life, the whole reason she’s trekked across America, is to put an end to the infection that brought down civilization. She would desperately want to believe the Fireflies; she feels guilty that she didn’t die when so many others did; and, most of all, she’s exhausted. At a certain point, she just wants to be done with this whole mess. I believe she’d like to go back to Jackson, learn to swim and play the guitar, and enjoy electricity and hot water again, but she has to save the world first. The cure has priority over her own life, in her mind (I think), but she’d like to be alive at the end of it.
> 
> For my part, I side with Joel. I look at the dirty, dimly lit operating room where you find Ellie, and I think about how the entire hospital is run down and falling apart in places, and there’s just no way I can buy that lab as the last hope of humanity. More importantly, throughout the game, we never see the Fireflies succeed at anything – not even once.
> 
> This is why I made the FEDRA building in “Tomorrow is Just Another Lie” so clean and well-kept. FEDRA might have the resources to find/manufacture/distribute a cure, but the Fireflies in Utah (which, assuming I understand it correctly, is their primary base, “their own little quarantine zone”, as Ellie describes it), just aren’t capable of it.
> 
> Lastly, I’ve tried hard throughout this long story to keep any OCs from taking too much of the focus away from Ellie and Joel, but now that we’ve arrived in Jackson, I have an entire town to populate with neighbors, and I found in an early draft that keeping the focus entirely on Joel and Ellie made Jackson feel like a weird, two-dimensional, town-shaped backdrop, populated by named mannequins. It’s nice to finally be writing about Tommy and Maria, but I needed more than just two people hanging around the saloon, you know? I tried to make Mark and Corinne feel like they belonged in this world. In upcoming chapters, I’ll add a few others OCs (including one on loan from someone else’s fic). I hope they don’t intrude too much.
> 
> And that about does it for this installment. See you in a couple of weeks for chapter two, “Today.”


	2. Today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wintertime in Jackson. Ellie and Joel are settled in at their new home. Snow lies thick on the ground and the sun rises over the mountain, the beginning of a very important day in Ellie's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does anyone here have the internets? I hear there’s quite the buzz online about a Last of Us sequel or something. Looks like I’d better finish this story fast before the next game comes out!

**“THE HOME AT THE END OF THE ROAD”**

**Chapter 02 - Today**

 

“Wanna try a little of this?” Joel says, drizzling a spoonful of strange syrup over the hotcakes piled on his plate.

“That’s the sore-gun stuff you bought at Andy’s?” Ellie asks skeptically, one eyebrow raised. The golden brown goo oozing its way down from Joel’s spoon, slowly covering the ‘pioneer pancakes’ she’d made this morning looks like a cross between motor oil and thick, gummy varnish, the kind Joel stains furniture with. They had ran out of black raspberry syrup two days ago, and with her jug of maple syrup empty, her only option now is to either smother her hotcakes in butter or take a chance on the dark goop that seems to have Joel quite excited.

“Sorghum,” he corrects. It’s a weird word. The farther they have traveled from Boston, the more weird words the girl has had to learn. “Just like my granny used to put on her biscuits.” He pushes the opened Mason jar towards her with a bearded smile. “Here. Try a little. It’s good.”

He has left the spoon in the wide-mouthed jar. It is slowly sinking to the bottom, being swallowed up by the gunk. Only half of the handle remains above the surface.

_Quicksand. Poor little spoon._

_Save me, Ellie! Save me! Don’t let the goo get me!_

_Okay, spoon. But you owe me one. This stuff better not be nasty._

She grins as she plucks the spoon from certain doom. Joel smiles, his teeth white, framed by whiskers, his face hopeful. He was so happy when he saw it on the shelf of the General Store yesterday. Ellie can’t help but let a little of his excitement rub off on her. It’s so rare to see a glimpse of the adorable little boy still hiding inside the man.

“So this stuff killed your granny, huh?” she teases, holding the spoon up, warily eyeing the long tendrils of syrupy fluid that slowly make their escape, dripping in slow motion down to the jar waiting below.

“Helped her live to be 95 is more like it,” Joel chuckles, forking a sorghumy bite of hotcake into his mouth.

“If this is some kind of trap…” she mutters, affecting a grim tone, poking a dubious fingertip into the spoonful of messy thickness. She pops it into her mouth, tastes it cautiously. She smiles, happily dips another finger. “You know what? This is kinda good, Joel.”

“Probably’d be even better if you’d keep your fingers out of it,” Joel snarks.

Ellie makes a great show of poking at the spoon several times before dipping it back into the jar, getting a fresh load of unpoked syrup. “Pfft. My finger’s the least of your worries, Joel. You don’t even want to know what I did to those pancakes. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say it’s Ellie’s secret ingredient for all her recipes.”

Joel chuckles and carves up his last sausage patty with a fork. Tomorrow or the day after will see the last of the sausage gone. They’ve been out of bacon for almost a month, the barrel of brine out in the smokehouse emptied of it precious, delicious salt pork, and now the sausage is all but gone too. However, there’s still plenty smoked ham ready and waiting in the little backyard smokehouse Joel built for them as summer wound down. Andy Givener still has some bacon and sausage for sale in the big commercial-sized refrigerator of the General Store, but Joel would prefer not to pay the higher prices that inevitably appear as the larders run low all over Jackson. This has been a rough winter. Or at least that’s what everyone here says. For Joel and Ellie, it’s not half as bad as the one they had last year.

“It’s not cornmeal that gives my waffles that special taste. That’s all I’m saying,” she grins devilishly.

“Hush,” he says around a mouthful of meat. “Put some of that good stuff on your biscuits. It came here all the way from our new neighbors, you know.”

“The Campbells?” Ellie teases, referring to the latest family to settle in Jackson. They arrived just as winter was about hit. A woman, her two children, and her brother. Refugees from somewhere in Montana, they’d been fortunate enough to be found by a scouting party out of Wind River and taken in for a while. During the last big meeting between their communities, the Shoshone had handed the family over to Jackson. They now lived in the house two doors up the street from Ellie and Joel. They were nice enough people, and very grateful to have a home here, but they were noticeably wary of Ellie.

_Bet they never even ate that big dish of bacon beans I gave them for Thanksgiving. Probably afraid they’d catch the cordyceps from my cooking or something._

_Fuck ‘em. They’ll get over it, just like everyone else in Jackson. Besides, I was here first._

“Andy said his scroungin’ team bought a couple of jars of this sorghum from some travelers they ran into down in Casper. Said they were part of a little group livin’ over in some place called Wood Lake. That’s in Nebraska. More than six hundred miles east of here, he says.”

“Truly, this syrup has traveled far to reach my plate,” Ellie says ceremoniously. She makes the sign of the cross over her breakfast. “Godspeed, tasty goop. Rest easy in my stomach now. Truly, you have earned it.”

She slathers her biscuits with the syrup. For good measure, she makes a decorative, squiggly trail across her two sausage patties. She’s going to miss the sausage almost as much as she misses the bacon. There’s still plenty of cornmeal and corn flour in the fridge and down in the storm cellar, but she’ll probably have to switch to using oats in the hotcakes recipe soon, just to make sure that there’ll be enough food to last until the next harvest. If you want to live as something other than a scavenger, you have to plan ahead.

_Flying by the seat of your pants is not how civilizations endure._

“Did Andy’s team tell the syrup people about Jackson?” she asks.

“Probably not,” Joel says, carefully noncommittal. Ellie’s heart still goes out to people in need, even strangers, just a little bit. Despite all the bad things she’s seen, she has never entirely given up hope for a friendlier world. “We don’t know anything about Wood Lake or the folks there. Not yet. Maybe we’ll put out the feelers one day soon. But we can’t put out the welcome mat for everyone.”

“Yeah, yeah. I understand. Oh! Speaking of putting things out, don’t let me forget to put out some beans to soak tonight before I go to bed,” she says. “And bring in a big chunk of ham from the smokehouse when you get home.” She lightly kicks at him under the table. “I’d do it, but,” and here she adopts her thickest Texan drawl, “Ah can’t have no dang ol’ girls violatin’ the manly sanctity of muh smokehouse, pardner.”

“If you’d just close the damn door, I wouldn’t mind you goin’ out there,” he says with a playful shake of his head, pointing a fork at her for added emphasis. “It’s can’t be a smokehouse if someone keeps lettin’ all the smoke out.”

“I swear, I think you go out there just to get away from me. Just because you know I hate smelling like smoke all day. It doesn’t wash out, y’know. Two minutes in there and I walk around smelling like a ham for the rest of the day.”

He chuckles. So does she.

They sit and eat in silence for a bit. Ellie has finally learned to slow down and chew her food. Joel finishes first. He has a big day ahead and can’t dawdle. Winter in Wyoming demands constant upkeep to stay ahead of the snow and ice piling up week after week. He washes down the last bites of food with a tall glass of cold buttermilk.

“Ick,” Ellie comments. “That stuff should only go in the mixing bowl.”

Joel laughs, standing, wiping his mouth. “It’s good for you. Puts hair on your chest.”

“Buttermilk is an ingredient, Joel, not a drink.”

He laughs, leans low to give her a quick hug and then heads for the kitchen door. His heavy coat and boots are in the living room, close to the front door. Ellie won’t have him dripping snow and slush all over her carpets. She works hard to keep them clean.

“I’m nervous, you know,” she blurts out, her chest suddenly tight, her back to him.

“Don’t be,” he says, a reassuring hand settling welcomingly on her shoulder.

“I’ve never done this before.”

“Yes, you have.” Standing behind her chair, he squeezer her shoulders with his hands.

“Not in front of people.” She sighs, relaxing a little, and settles back against him. “Just you. And you’re not people. People are civilized. A civilized person wouldn’t make me do this.”

“C’mon now, Ellie. We’ve been practicin’ this for a month. You’ll do fine, girl.”

“Ugh. Just dismiss me and my big bag of worries, why don’cha? Sheesh.”

“You’ll do fine, Ellie. It’s just like ridin’ a bicycle.”

“I’ve never ridden a bicycle, Joel, and thanks for reminding me of my lonely, deprived childhood, you heartless ass.” She grins, tilting her head to look up him.

“Aw, you’re just fishin’ for sympathy now. Huntin’ up a hug, that’s all.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just grumpy because we’re out of bacon because somebody always has to have three slices instead of two.” She drawls again, pretending to be bearded and Texan. “Gotta eat me an extra slice, buckaroo. Ah got a powerful need fer somethin’ that sticks to muh ribs since Ah’m a man doin’ manly work all day, Ah reckon. Now where’s muh beatin’ stick? Gotta beat Ellie so’s she’ll wash the dishes and sweep up ‘round here.”

“Is that what I’ve gotta do to get these dishes washed in this house?”

She giggles as she stands up from the table.

He pantomimes beating her with a stick. She cackles and whomps him with an invisible beating stick of her own.

“You can’t beat me anymore, Joel. I’m friends with the mayor of Mariaville. I’ll sic the law on you, buddy.”

“Shut up, you little shit. I’ll smack your little orphan butt whenever I want. I always have and I’m not gonna stop now.”

He has never raised a hand against her in his life. It is a strange sort of joke that has developed over time, a thing they share that no one else would understand. She giggles.

“You’re gonna feel pretty stupid when Maria comes in here and kicks you in the butt with those snakeskin boots of hers. She’ll take both our beating sticks away and then what will we do on our day off?”

He snorts dismissively. “Maria can have my beatin’ stick when she pries it from my cold, dead hand. Hell, I’m doin’ this whole town a favor by keepin’ your little punk ass in line, girl. The day I stop the beatin’s is the day you burn this poor, unsuspectin’ town to the ground. Nobody but me knows how you are.”

They laugh and gather up the remains of their breakfast. They stand at the sink, washing the dishes together.

_He must be in a good mood. I usually can’t get him anywhere near a sink full of dishes._

_Maybe this is my chance?_

_Here goes nothing, I guess._

“Sooo…” she begins, her voice rising half an octave with each question she asks. “Can I have a kiss? For luck? For tonight?”

Close beside her, he tries to kiss her forehead; she moves her head, offering up another target instead. He hesitates before kissing her lips. Just a peck. She almost hops in sheer joy, but she restrains herself. It’s important to act her age.

“Hee hee.” A lovely, girlish sound. She can’t help it.

The way she fills out her blue flannel shirt and burgundy sweat pants make her look like an adult, but her giddy giggle and infectious smile reminds him that there’s still some of the girl in there too. Joel’s cock begins to stir inside his jeans.

“Careful. You’re gonna get me thinkin’ all sorts of things, girl.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not like you haven’t kissed me before, dude. Remember the Fourth of July?”

“Yeah… well…” He rubs at the back of his neck sheepishly. “I was probably drunk that night. And we had just moved into this house.”

She pokes a wet, sudsy finger into his stomach. “We’d been living here for _three months_ , dude! What was your excuse the second time?”

He is more confident now, no longer caught off guard by her surprise attack. “It was Christmas. I was excited about Santa. You know how I get when he comes to town.”

“Nope. That was the third time. Second time was in October. Walking back from the Fall Festival. Remember? Don’t pretend you forgot. You _better not_ have forgotten. I haven’t.”

He remembers her in her long-sleeved sundress. Too young to have such fine curves, such long legs, white and smooth, framed perfectly between strappy sandals and a fluttering mid-thigh hemline that danced with every breeze that came along. Tiny waist cinched by a fabric strap tied in a decorative little bow at the back, above her heart-shaped ass. Beautiful breasts beneath the green and white fabric. Braless. Tits bouncing with each step of those perfect legs. Long hair, auburn, glossy, and loose, spilling down her back, swaying in time with her hips as she walked alongside him. She held his arm with both hands and leaned against him as they stood there in the open lot behind the church, a park of sorts, listening to Maria and the other bigwigs give inspiring speeches. She was so beautiful in her dress. Soft and small and warm beside him. She had looked up at him, he still remembers it, smiling and freckled and clearly in love with him. He recalls with perfect clarity the loose neckline of the dress. With her shoulders pulled together they way they had been as she held on to his arm, he had been able to look down the front of her dress and see most of her breasts. Milky white, creamy smooth, just the hint of rose pink nipples visible at the edges of the green and white frame of fabric. Her nipples were clearly hard, poking at the front of her dress. His cock had been hard, jutting against the front of his pants. The crowd was so focused on Jim Belmont’s rousing speech, that maybe they hadn’t noticed the lust boiling over from the old man and the young girl. Maybe. If they were lucky. But Joel had seen. And Ellie had too. She had stepped lightly to one side, pressing her hip against his erection, hiding it from the crowd, claiming it for herself. It had been all he could do not to fuck her brains out when they returned home that evening. She was so devoted and so pretty and so very fucking young that he was determined not to ruin her. There were other young men in town. She’d find a good life with one of them. God knew she certainly drew their eyes often enough. She’d find one of them and be happy. He couldn’t screw that up for her no matter how much it killed him to know that someone as lovely and eager to please as her was sleeping just across the hall from him every night.

“Zip it before I whack you over the head with my beatin’ stick. Gotta use it before the government here takes it away.”

He has been fighting his desire for her for as long as they’ve been in Jackson, mostly successfully. But not always. He had… slipped… a few times, encouraging her, giving her just enough hope to never give up on him… on them.

She’s persistent, he thinks. Girl gets a notion in her head and she digs in like a tick.

“On your way out to the cellar, don’t forget to feed the chickens,” he reminds her.

“I won’t. But there’d better be some eggs in that coop or we’re having chicken sandwiches tonight. No eggs for months! Sheesh! Lazy little mothercluckers!”

“They’re takin’ a break. They’ll start layin’ again when spring comes. When you put out the feed in their trough, mix in some oats. Scatter a little grit for ‘em too.”

“‘Kay.” She leans against him as she rinses out a glass. She smiles sweetly and coos in her best schoolteacher voice. “My goodness! When did we get so domestic, Joel?”

“Alright. I gotta get to work,” he says, suddenly needing a little space from the warmth of her body. An erection is forming in his workpants. “They’ll be expectin’ me any minute and the snow’s knee-deep out there. But I oughta be home in plenty of time. When’s Burt got you comin’ in today?”

“Noon,” she answers, drying a plate with a swirling dishrag. “But he says he’s gonna let me leave early for obvious reasons.”

“Good. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“Don’t get eaten by a polar bear.”

“I won’t.” He leans in, gives her a big, warm hug, tries to keep his prominent erection from grazing her ass.

She exhales happily, wanting the moment to last forever. Life is good here.

His voice is husky and sexier than he knows.

“Happy birthday, Ellie.”

 

* * *

 

Matthew Miller sits in the middle of the floor, smiling toothlessly, babbling happily. He slaps his hands on his chubby thighs with joyous, uncoordinated flailing. His head, still a bit too big for his body, swivels from side to side as he looks at the two women clapping and calling his name. A few feet away, to his left, a woman, Mommy, with her blonde hair and familiar voice. To his right, a smaller woman, red hair, freckles. Her voice is becoming familiar too. Sometimes he spends time with her when mommy and daddy aren’t around. They both call to him: the red haired one with more overt enthusiasm, Mommy with more tender warmth.

“Over here, Matty!” Ellie says, on all fours, one hand up, gesturing wildly. “Come to Ellie! I’ve got candy for you!”

“You do not,” Maria laughs, sitting on her heels, patting her thighs gently, and signaling to her child. “Stop lying to my son.”

“He doesn’t know that,” Ellie snickers, reaching out for the baby, beckoning him over with waggling fingers. “I could have a ton of candy over here! He won’t figure out the truth ‘til it’s too late. Besides, I need this point to tie or I’m out of the game. C’mere, Matty! Come to Ellie! I love you more than she does! I love you the most! Now get over here! I can’t lose again! Don’t break my heart, you little poop machine!”

“Come here, Matty,” coos Maria. The soft sound brings his head around to her, and he begins to crawl towards her. “That’s a good boy. Come to momma.”

“Damn it, kid! Fine! Be that way, you little goober. Go to her! See if I care!” Ellie lies down on her belly with a resigned sigh. “But when you turn sixteen and start sneaking out, don’t ask me to lie to your mom to cover for you, ‘cause I’m _never_ going to forget this betrayal.”

“Ellie,” Maria purrs, scooping up her little boy, “please don’t plot revenge against my son. He’s only seven months old.”

“And yet he already has an arch nemesis.” Ellie lies facedown on the carpet, utterly defeated. She needs to leave for the stables soon. Burt won’t be thrilled if she comes strolling in for work late, especially since she’s only working a half-shift today.

_Strolling? More like trudging. The snow is so fucking deep out there._

Ellie mutters, already dreading the long walk to the stables. “With all this heartless betrayal, it’s like Matty wants me to be his arch-enemy or something.”

“He’s ambitious,” Maria coos to her son, trying to smooth down his unruly blonde hair. “Just like his momma.”

Ellie speaks with her face in the carpet, her voice muffled and melodramatic. “He’ll regret this day, Maria. You’ll see. You’ll all see! Ellie Williams does not take defeat lying down!”

“You are lying down.” Maria bounces her boy happily in her arms and he giggles charmingly. “It wasn’t a total blow out. Three to two. Pretty close this time. But I win. Again.”

“Ugh. You _always_ win,” Ellie grouses affectionately, rising to join Maria as the older woman sits down on the couch with her child. “I just can’t figure it out. It’s like he loves you more than me or something.”

“He knows his momma,” Maria grins as Matthew fumbles his sticky little hands against her face. “Plus, he’s a winner. Just like me.”

“God, you’re so smug. Clearly you want me to charge you more for babysitting,” Ellie says, making funny faces for the baby, who babbles in delight. “Tommy’s gonna be pissed when he hears I’m raising my rates. I’ll be tacking on a smug tax. That’s what I’ll tell him. You made me do it.”

Maria laughs. So does her son.

“Won’t do you any good. I’ve still got one or two of your free babysitting coupons left,” Maria notes wryly.

“Dang it! I should have never given those things to you guys. The Christmas spirit always makes me act crazy!”

 

* * *

 

The snow is deep. Her soft, tall, oil-treated buckskin overboots go all the way up to her knees. Another inch of snow, and they won’t be high enough. The sidewalks of Jackson are shoveled regularly, but Ellie likes to blaze her own trail.

“Hey, Ellie,” Reno the guard says as she smooshes and crunches her way towards him. He is wrapped up head to toe. Only his eyes peer out from the dark recesses of his parka. A flap-holstered pistol is on his hip. He left his shotgun inside the shack when he tromped out to meet her. “Come to pay him a visit again?”

“You know it,” she smiles from inside her coat’s hood. “It’s not like he gets any other visitors but me.”

“He’s not supposed to get any visitors,” the guard says. Reno isn’t actually his name. It’s where he’s from. His real name is Steve, but Jackson already had three Steves before this new one arrived, so everyone calls him Reno. “It’s against the rules.”

“C’mon, Reno. Not like he’s gonna infect me,” Ellie chuckles.

Reno shrugs, not putting up a fight. It’s cold and he wants to get back into the meager warmth of his little, semi-insulated guard shack. He takes out the keys and lets Ellie into the enclosure.

“If anybody asks,” Reno says, “I’m gonna tell them it was snowing so hard that I thought you were Dr. Copper or Corinne.”

“Appreciate it,” Ellie says with a wave, walking the shoveled path to the lonely mobile home.

Reno closes the gate behind her, fencing her in. She climbs the three steps up to the door and knocks.

“Professor Swanwick? You home?”

Wobbly Dr. Swanwick. Oldest man in Jackson. Older even than her boss, Burt Charles, a man so old he claims he grew up across the street from Mary and Joseph and their little boy, Jesus.

Fletcher Swanwick PhD had been a colleague of Dr. Paul Rey, Maria’s father. Before the outbreak, Swanwick had been professor of agriculture, which made him invaluable to Rey’s expedition, despite his advanced age. The selections in crops and livestock, the schedules for planting, harvesting, crop rotation, the methods of composting, green housing citrus plants, virtually everything that has kept the people of Jackson healthy and well-fed for years still follow the original plans laid down by this man in those days before the group even left Boston.

Jackson owes him more than can ever be repaid. It’s why he’s the only old person here drawing a pension so large that it affords him an easy retirement.

But Dr. Swanwick has chosen to perform one final, important service for the town he helped build.

“You home?” Ellie asks, knocking again.

“Where else would I be, young lady?” comes the response from inside.

The door opens and the stooped, wizened figure beckons her inside. “Come in! Come in! You’re letting all the old man smell out!”

Ellie giggles and hurries inside.

“Woke me up from a nap,” he says as she stomps her feet on the plastic welcome mat, scattering snow all over the tiled floor. “Hope you weren’t out there shivering too long, young lady.”

“Nah, I’m good,” she says. “Sorry I ruined your nap.”

“Oh,” he shrugs with frail, bowed shoulders, “I’m sure I’ll make it up with the next one. Never a shortage of naps when you get to be my age.”

“Nobody else is your age, Professor,” she smiles, giving him a very gentle hug.

“True,” he says, motioning for her to sit down on the couch. “But one of these days, we’ll have enough people like me in Jackson to set up a proper retirement community. ‘Old Folks Home’ we used to call them.”

Ellie unzips her coat and tugs her hood down.

“Take your coat off,” he urges, lowering his old bones into the comfortable cushions of the recliner. “Stay a while.”

“Can’t,” she says. “I’m on my way to work. If I’m late, Burt will smack me upside the head with a horseshoe. You know how he is.”

“Oh, just sneak in through the back. He won’t even know you did it. He’s as deaf as a post. It’s all those rock concerts that did it. Roadie!” the old man sniffs. “What sort of career is that? If he hadn’t grown up on that horse farm that he was so determined to get away from, Paul would have had no use for him here.” He pauses for a moment, thinking, trying to remember, which is something that is harder for him with each passing year. “You never met Paul, did you?”

“No, sir,” Ellie says. “Maria’s dad died a couple of years before I got here.”

“Oh yes, that’s right. That’s right.” The man sighs wistfully, a thin, feeble sound. “Pity. He would have liked you. You’re a lot like his daughter was when she was young. Optimistic. Enthusiastic. Smart. Very smart.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ellie says in the louder than normal tone one usually adopts when talking to the elderly.

“Yes, Paul would have liked you. But he’s gone now. All of them are gone. All but me.” He settles back into the chair, somehow sad and smug at the same time. “Certainly didn’t expect that. Not at all. Paul was a health nut. So was Victor. Danielle too. She was a vegan. At least she was for as long as that was still an option. Once FEDRA started loading up our rations sacks with cans of Spam and Tuna and what have you, it wasn’t possible to be a vegan anymore. Tofu just wasn’t on the menu after the apocalypse. I guess the great flocks of wild tofurkeys went extinct. Vegans had to give up their ways. You ever hear of vegans?”

“That’s like a vegetarian or something, right?”

“Almost. But with a little bit of Jehovah’s Witness mixed in,” he chuckles, making another joke she doesn’t quite follow. “On a mission from God, every one of them. Wanted all of us to be just like them too. Never stopped talking about it. Saving the world by spreading the good word of broccoli or sea cucumbers or something. Holy cause for them, you might say.”

Ellie nods politely, not understanding a word of it. Vegans? Tofurkeys? Jehovah’s Witness? Words from a bygone age.

“I outlived all of them. No idea how I did it. I was a drinker. I was a smoker. Still am, actually. Tommy smuggles in tobacco every now and again. He gets it from the Indians, I think. Copper looks the other way, but don’t tell Corinne.”

“I won’t,” she winks.

“83 years old and I still eat bacon every morning. Maybe that’s my secret?”

“Mmm! I love bacon,” she smiles.

“Blessed bacon,” he grins. “God loved the world so much that He gave us big, thick strips of His divine love.”

Ellie laughs. She glances at the windup clock on the little bookcase in corner. She can’t stay much longer.

“So how many days now, Professor?” she asks.

“Thirty-one?” he responds, more asking than saying. “Thirty-two? It’s so hard to keep track in here. The days all run together, you know? And this time of the year, they’re so short. Doesn’t help matters.”

“Yeah, I know all about that,” she says. “I spent a few weeks in this trailer, back when I first arrived. It sucked.”

“I remember that,” he says. “It was big news. Everyone in town was talking about it. You were the infected girl. That’s what they called you. Then they started calling you the immune girl, I guess because all that time went by and you didn’t start gnawing on random townsfolk.”

Ellie beams a smile that warms the old man to his core. “There’s a few I’d like to bite.”

“Some of them probably deserve it.” He settles deeper into the recliner. “It’s strange. I remember that time rather clearly. And I remember my days as a young grad student with perfect detail. But ask me what I had for breakfast this morning, and I can’t be sure.”

“Probably bacon,” Ellie grins.

“God, I hope so,” he laughs then sighs softly. “Don’t get old, young lady. I recommend you avoid it at all costs.”

She laughs. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

He looks around, suddenly alert. “What day is it? Monday?”

“Wednesday, sir.”

“Already?” he sighs, settling back into the recliner, tugging a warm blanket in place across his legs. “How did that happen?”

“Time flies,” she smiles.

“You have no idea,” he yawns. “Did that young man – the newest Steve – Reno, I think they call him – did he give you any problems at the gate?”

“A little,” Ellie grins, “but I told him it was either let me in, or I was gonna sneak over the fence like Batman.”

“That’s the spirit, young lady. Fight the power. I wish I was still a rebel like you. But I’m too old for it. Hard to be a rebel if you take as many naps as I do.”

“You’re still a rebel,” she says. “Just like me. That’s why we’re friends, Professor.”

“Yes, I suppose we are,” he says. “That’s why I let them inject me with your mushroom sauce, you know. Because all the cool rebels were doing the ‘shrooms. And I give in to peer pressure so easily.”

Ellie laughs again. It brings a smile to the old man’s face when he sees her enjoying his humor, so she does her best to never miss an opportunity.

“Everybody should try the ‘shrooms, sir.”

He chuckles, a sound like a dry, splintering wheeze. The deep lines in his face part, making room for a broad smile. “It’s like my first spring break trip all over again. Baker Beach. San Francisco. My god, what a week that was.”

“Is that near Los Angeles?” Ellie asks.

“Yes, it is,” he answers. “Lovely beaches.”

“Man, I always wanted to go there.”

“Lovely beaches with lovely ladies,” he muses, his mind far away for a moment. “Maybe one day you’ll get the chance. Who knows? If this plan of Dr. Copper’s works.”

“Maybe,” Ellie says hopefully. A comfortable silence fills the room after that. She likes Swanwick but, like so many young people, she has a hard time having lengthy conversations with the elderly. So little common ground.

“Feels like I’m forgetting to do something,” he says to no one in particular. “I hate that feeling.”

Ellie smiles and makes a happy but noncommittal sound. She needs to leave soon, but there’s something on her mind. She ponders how best to broach the subject.

“It’s not so bad in here, you know,” the old man muses aloud. “The heater works. This chair is soft. Sleeping in a bunk bed is like being back at summer camp. People bring me hot food. I don’t like cooking. Never did. Plus, I like the privacy. Being in quarantine keeps the cowards away. The only visitors I get are the brave ones.”

“Professor?” she begins.

“Yes?”

“Why did you agree to this? I mean, why volunteer for something so risky?”

“Why not?” he says, as though people choose to infect themselves with cordyceps all the time. Seeing the skeptical look on the young woman’s face, he adds in a tired voice, “I did it because I’m old, Ellie. And I’m not long for this world.”

“Don’t say that. You’ve got a bunch of years left in –”

“No, I don’t. I’ve outlived everybody. Who knows, maybe I’m the oldest man in the world now. But I’m tired and I’m getting forgetful and my legs are almost worn out. I’ll be lucky to see another winter. No point in pretending otherwise.”

Ellie looks at her shoes sheepishly. “Maybe not. You never know.”

“I’ve done everything I could to help this community thrive. The engineers may keep the electricity flowing. And the mechanics may keep the trucks and tractors going. Even Burt manages to keep the horses happy and healthy. But I keep the people here fed. Or at least I did.”

“You still do,” she insists gently. “Maria told me that we’re still following all the instructions you wrote down when you first got here. Heck, we’ve got more crops and cows and pigs and stuff than we know what to do with, Professor.”

“I wrote that stuff down a long time ago, Ellie. All I did after that was supervise people a lot younger than me until I was sure they understood it.”

“Burt says the best job in the world is supervising other people.”

He laughs, coughs, tries to catch his breath. Everything comes hard to the elderly, Ellie is discovering. She’s never known anyone as old as this man.

“Yes, well, Burt would say that, wouldn’t he?” Swanwick sighs, amused and forlorn at the same time. “When I’m gone, Burt Charles is going to be oldest man in the world. He’ll be wise by default then. People will come from miles around for his advice. God help us all,” he chuckles. He looks around the room, certain that he will probably die here, which is fine by him. His eyes come to rest on the kind, attentive face of the young woman who comes to visit so often. He nods and tells her the unvarnished truth. She deserves no less. “I volunteered because I’m expendable, Ellie. The town can afford to do without me –” He holds up a hand to halt the words of protest already forming in her mouth. “Yes, it can, Ellie. And it will have to, soon enough. Whether I die from this or that or some other thing, it’s going to happen before long. It will probably be pneumonia, given the track record of Jackson and its older citizens so far. That’s the price of being up in these mountains. We’re safe and hidden up here, but that’s the tradeoff: shitty winters. Unavoidable. But no matter when it happens or how, if my death can be of some value to the people here – especially the young people like you, and Paul’s daughter, and now his grandson, who he never got the chance to meet – then I’ll go into the void satisfied. I know that may be hard for a young person to understand. The young are terrified of death. And they should be, of course. There’s still so much for them to do, and so much to see. But when you get to be my age, you’ve done all you’re going to do, and there’s not much to see – mostly because old eyes don’t work for shit, let me tell you.”

Ellie laughs. She bends low, giving the old man a gentle, loving hug.

“Don’t be in any hurry to die, Professor,” she says. “You’re in the exclusive CBI survivor’s club now. You and me are the only members cool enough to join.”

He laughs and watches her zip up her coat and step out into the cold. Once the door has closed and the girl is gone, he settles into his recliner, snug beneath his favorite heavy blanket. A long, still moment passes with only the sound of the wind outside to keep him company.

“Damn it! _That’s_ what I forgot to do!” the old man suddenly says to the empty room. “Wish Ellie a happy birthday.” He yawns and mumbles, “Oh well. She’ll be back tomorrow. Better make… a mental… note… …”

Gentle snoring fills the room.

 

* * *

 

Ellie hangs the flat-edged scoop shovel onto its waiting hooks near the inside door. She stomps the snow from her overboots and tries to will the modestly warm air of the big stable into her chilled body. She calls towards the interior office, built into the corner of the back wall of the giant red barn.

“Paddock’s clean, boss.”

A rascally cantankerous voice wafts out, barely carrying over the rock music playing from the old boom box inside. “Didn’t miss any, didja?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Better for you if you didn’t. Stuff’s easier to pick up when it’s frozen. Once the thaw comes, any brown biscuits you missed are gonna get mucky.”

“Ick.” This is her first winter at the stables. She’s not looking forward to the mess that is hiding under the snow out there. The music coming from the office suddenly switches off. She turns to look.

Burt Charles, seventy-two years old and powered entirely by gumption, hard apple cider, and a large stockpile of tall tales from his days as a rock and roll roadie, emerges from the warm little office and makes his way across the dirt floor of the large barn towards Ellie, his spindly legs shuffling along in boots that are a size and half too big and stuffed with rags to keep his bony feet warm.

“Get it all loaded into the poop box?” he asks, using his preferred term for the compost bin behind the barn.

“Sure did, boss. Horrifying and mentally scarring, just like always. Need any help with the hotel rooms?” She waves a hand in the direction of the two long rows of stalls.

Burt clicks his tongue, winks, and points a finger gun at Ellie. “Got the last of them sorted while you were scooping the poop out there. Be time to bring the boys and girls in soon, I think. Storm coming in tonight, from the look of that sky.”

“Yeah. It’s gray, but it’s not too overcast just yet,” she says. She would know. She’s been out there for two hours. Her red nose and frozen feet are proof of that. “They don’t seem to like coming indoors while the sun’s out. Need help wrangling them up?”

The old codger crosses his arms and nods approvingly, his head wobbling more or less up and down on the leathery stalk of his neck. “I’ll take it, sure. But don’t think that showing initiative is gonna get you another raise. Don’t want to spoil you.”

Ellie laughs and rolls her eyes. The recent increase in her pay was so microscopic that she isn’t sure if science could determine whether it was an actual raise or merely a theoretical one.

Burt continues, “That new guy, Frank, should be coming by soon with a pickup truck full of hay. He’s your neighbor, right?”

“Frank Campbell? Yeah, he lives a few houses down from me.”

“Good guy?”

Ellie shrugs. “I guess. He talks to Joel sometimes. They get along, I guess. He’s still avoiding me. Afraid of catching my cooties.”

Burt pantomimes writing something in the invisible notepad he always keeps handy. “I’ll be sure to tell him he can go fuck himself, _after_ he’s unloaded the hay, naturally. Don’t even worry about it, ponygirl. Burt’s got it right here in his ‘To Do’ list.”

Ellie smiles. She likes the nickname he uses for her.

“Thanks, Burt.”

Burt nods. “Good bosses look after their people.” He points a finger in the air, suddenly remembering. “Oh! Speaking of that, after we get our groupies backstage and make ‘em comfy, then you can take off early. Don’t want you turning up late for your big hootenanny.”

“Hootenanny,” Ellie chuckles under her breath, never quite sure if Burt is using real words or not.

He wags a cautionary finger at her. “But double check all the tail bags before you go. If I see so much as one poopy tail in the morning…”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. You’ll put my ponytail in the tail bag.”

“Yep. And don’t nobody want that.” He shrugs on his big winter coat. The skinny old coot is swallowed up by the pillowy expanse of it. “Poop is hard to wash out.”

She opens the big double doors, shivers as the cold wind blows in on them. “I’ll take your word on that, Burt.”

She accompanies her boss out into the cold. He rests one mittened hand on her shoulder, imparting his wisdom as they go out towards the waiting horses. “I know what I’m talking about, ponygirl. I watched GG Alin shit himself on stage back in ‘84 or ‘85. Christ, what a mess. Never forgot that tour.”

 

* * *

 

She puts on her maroon satin blouse; the nice shirt Joel got her for Christmas. God only knew where he got it. It’s so fancy, she’s only worn it once before, at a friend’s wedding a month ago – a shotgun wedding, Joel had called it. Why else would anyone get married in January?

_If a girl at the prep school got knocked up, she just kind of disappeared. Nothing happened to the boy though. Doesn’t seem right._

Maria told her that this blouse is very flattering on her, and the mirror seems to back that up, but Ellie feels a little out of place in it. Like she’s a girl trying on her Mom’s clothes, hoping not to get caught before she can get the things back in the closet.

She admires herself in the mirror mounted above her dresser, turning this way and that, pleased with how small her waist looks with the shirt tucked in, smoothing the nice fabric under the noticeable swell of her breasts, which had finally decided to show up last year. She had been hoping for a little more, joking with Joel that she was going to write a song called ‘The B-Cup Blues’, but she decides in this moment that what she has is enough. Maybe even more than enough on a small frame like hers. Maria has told her that perky is better than big, especially as the years start to weigh you down, so to speak.

_This shiny shirt sure makes my boobs stand out. I like that._

She threads her nicest black leather belt through the loops of her only pair of black denim jeans. She has a small waist and her hips have filled out nicely too. She studies herself in the mirror again, decides she has a pretty decent butt too: round, and high, and firm. She wonders if Joel will ever notice.

_Who knows? Maybe he already has, Ellie._

_God, I hope so. I think I’m all done filling out. I’m pretty sure these are all the curves I’m getting._

She slips on her embroidered, shiny black cowboy boots. Tommy had found them somewhere last summer and they’re a perfect fit, which is unusual. She has small feet and it’s hard to find women’s boots in her size. She usually has to make do with girl’s sneakers, which is fine most of the time, but sometimes she wants to feel older, more like the grownup that Maria insists she is now. She treasures these glossy black boots. She calls them her ‘fancy lady boots’ and only wears them for town festivals and the like. They go great with her dark jeans and the shiny satin shirt. She crosses the room to brush her long hair again, feeling more like a grownup with each step she takes in the boots. Her hair is halfway down her back now, hanging as low as her bra strap. She considers braiding it. That’s her go-to look when she’s doing something formal, something that a ponytail might seem inappropriate for. After a moment spent looking at herself in the mirror, she decides to leave her hair down. Joel almost never sees her like that, just when she’s coming out of her bedroom or stepping out of the shower. Having her hair down is an intimate thing between them. She never lets anyone see her like that but him.

_Maybe the combination of seeing me dressed up but with my hair down will jog something loose in his big, dangly man parts and jumpstart his libido._

She gives herself another long look in the mirror, turning her body to just the right angle.

_Boobs? Check._

_Butt? Check._

_Hair? Check._

_This had better work._

She bends her back just a little more, pushing her butt out like the women in Riley’s old fashion magazines.

_Is this sexy? I hope so. God knows I’ve tried everything else these last few months._

_I mean, I know I still give him a boner. I see him trying to hide it from me sometimes. But he never… Why won’t he…_

“Ugh,” she grunts.

_Men are so weird. Even the good-looking ones._

It’s time to put all her cards on the table. Tonight she’s going all in. She’ll bluff if she has to, pretend she’s more of a grown up than she feels like, act flirty and fetching, like Maria tells her to do, even work up the nerve to flash him those bedroom eyes she’s been practicing in the mirror every night lately, if that’s what it takes. But she has to know one way or the other. Dancing around each other they way they’ve been these last few months is driving her crazy.

_He’ll notice me tonight. He’ll see I’m grown up. He will. I’m sure of it._

_Maybe Maria is right. Maybe all he needs is a gentle nudge. Tight jeans, shiny boob-magnifying shirt, cute boots. I can’t nudge any harder than this._

_And if that doesn’t work, I’ll kick him in the butt with my shiny boots. He deserves it._

She hears the first of the guests arriving downstairs. Joel said he only invited a few people, but he wouldn’t tell her exactly how many.

“Ellie!” he calls up to her from the living room. This is not a house where messages are relayed discreetly. “People here to see you.”

“All right,” she replies loudly. “All right,” she repeats softly. Crowds are not her thing.

_God, I hope he didn’t invite everyone in town._

**. . .**

Half the town is in her house.

She’s never heard so many adults singing ‘Happy Birthday’ at once.

_I’m an adult now too. That’s kinda weird._

“Thanks,” she says in a tiny voice, once they’ve all stopped singing. “Wow. Gosh. Thanks, everybody.”

“Ha! Look! She’s blushing,” Lonny, the town’s short wave radio operator, teases.

“Maybe I’m just drunk,” she snarks, her cheeks red.

“This should help with that,” Corinne says, stepping forward.

The woman holds a small, square, cardboard box filled at the corners with crushed newsprint and four, red-brown, eleven-ounce, stubby neck beer bottles nestled safely inside. A few people here in town have their own little microbreweries, so Ellie can’t be sure who made this beer. The neatly crimped-on bottle caps are matte white, with a fancy cursive ‘E’ drawn on top of each one with a permanent marker.

“For you,” Mark Copper says, appearing from behind Corinne like a ghost. He reaches around Corinne, pulls a bottle from the box, and hands it to Ellie.

Her freckled face breaks into a wide grin. Corinne has always been a doodler. Ellie has seen Corinne’s cute sketches in the margins of most of the paperwork she has helped the woman file at the hospital, but the little cartoon portrait of Ellie, cheeks freckled, ponytail swinging, snarling fiercely, fists bunched up and ready to fight, brings a huge smile to the real Ellie’s face. She scans the neatly written letters featured prominently across the paper label taped to the bottle.

 

 __ **Ë** **llïëBräü**

_Jackson’s Finest  
        Mushroom Filtered Booze_

_Beer For Asskickers_

 

“Oh my God,” Ellie squeaks, adorably awestruck. “ _So many umlauts!_ ”

“Don’t drink it all tonight. Save at least one bottle for tomorrow morning,” Corinne advises. “That will help with the hangover.”

“Don’t do that,” Mark says. “All that does is numb you for a while and it makes the headache even worse.”

“Shh,” Corinne says to the man leaning over her shoulder. “Ellie has to learn that the hard way. That’s part of growing up.”

“Ooh! So much to learn! Thanks, you two,” Ellie beams. “I’m gonna go put this in the fridge. Joel says warm beer is un-American.”

“He’s right,” says Dan Choi, twenty-three years old and already Jackson’s best hunter, passing by on his way to the bathroom. Grinning deviously, he reaches for one of Ellie’s beers but she maneuvers the box away from his questing fingers.

“Get your own umlaut beer, Dan.”

He laughs. So does Corinne. From the corner of her eye, Ellie notices Mark discretely working his way towards the kitchen. She says another quick thank you to Corinne and makes a beeline for the kitchen. The back door is already closing as she arrives. Mark has made his escape from the crowded party. Ellie’s feelings aren’t hurt. She’s grateful that Mark would brave such an event, even for just a few minutes, on her behalf. She puts the bottles of beer at the back of the refrigerator, painstakingly hiding them behind other things, hoping that no one will discover her stash and drink it.

Ellie takes a deep breath and returns to the crowded living room. So many people are here, and it seems everyone brought a little something for her. Ellie receives each present graciously, flattered and overwhelmed. She wishes she could slip out the back too. There are almost more people here than she can manage. Joel is very well-liked. A good carpenter makes a lot of friends in a small town. Some of that popularity has rubbed off on Ellie, even though she tends to keep to herself. Privacy is just her way. People understand that about her now, but she has made her fair share of friends in Jackson. All of her friends are here, and many of Joel’s as well.

Lonny and his wife, Trish, give her a batch of apple dumplings, sealed safely inside an old, gray-brown ‘Country Crock’ bowl.

“Got a little cold on the way over,” Trish says. “Might want to heat it up first.”

Ellie pops the lid off and sniffs the dessert without shame. It’s her party. Shame is for other people. The intoxicating aromas of butter and brown sugar fill all the interior crevices of her head.

“Ohmygodthissmellssogood,” she gushes. “Damn, I wish I could cook like you, Trish.”

“Use double butter,” Trish offers sagely. “In everything. And lots of maple sugar too.”

Ellie snickers. “I’ve tried that. It still doesn’t work. I burn everything. The last time I tried to cook dessert, I made an apple crisp that came out so evil and awful that I had to throw it away. I felt so bad for it, the poor thing. It tried so hard to be a good dessert but I just screwed it up so badly that I had to put it out of its misery. I caught Joel eating it from the garbage can like a raccoon.”

“Give those dumplings to Joel later and tell him you made them,” Trish grins.

Ellie raises an eyebrow. “And get his hopes up that I’ve learned how to cook? That’s just mean.”

Interjecting, Lonny thanks her for the radio codes. They were in the little notebook Ellie had found in the old, shot-up Firefly truck she’d passed along the side of the road on her way to Wyoming. She’d given the notebook to Maria a few months ago. Decoding the notes was difficult, but Lonny liked a challenge.

“Next time you pull guard duty at the radio tower,” he says, “I’ll show you what we’ve deciphered so far.”

“I’m too young for guard duty, Lonny,” Ellie protests, almost as a reflex. “Oh, wait. No, I’m not. Damn. This being an adult stuff is going to take some getting used to.”

“Get used to paying taxes too,” Maria says, making her way through the crowd towards the kitchen, a covered dish in her hands.

Ellie feigns disbelief. “I have to pay _taxes_ now? What a racket you’ve got going.”

Maria nods, never breaking stride, trailing savory, meat and cheese vapors in her wake. She hears the same complaint from every resident. “I know, right? What good are taxes except to keep the town lights on and pay for the guard towers and the snow shoveling? Eventually, they’ll pay for that library you want so much.”

Ellie closes her eyes, envisioning the future. “Mmm. Library. Once you build it, I’m gonna put a cot in there and never leave it.”

“But we’ll miss you, bookworm,” says Laurie Engdahl, appearing from the crowd, hugging Ellie from behind. She is one of the few teenaged friends Ellie has. “We’ll have to make you the town librarian or something.”

“That would work,” Ellie says, stroking her chin contemplatively and doing her absolute best not to notice how well Laurie’s humungous breasts fill out a fleece sweater – it’s not easy being attracted to your best, boy-crazy, tragically non-bisexual, friend. “Yes, that would work very well.”

“Happy birthday. Here,” Laurie says, holding up a round brass chit. It bears the fancy capital J stamped into the metal that can be found on all Jackson currency. Below that, there is a small ‘I’, a roman numeral that denotes this as a one-dollar coin. “For luck.”

Ellie takes it graciously. A dollar is lot of money here, especially for a fifteen year old like Laurie. “Thanks. But why is this one so lucky?”

“Look closely at it,” Laurie teases. She loves mysteries. She’s a reader, just like Ellie, though Laurie’s tastes run more towards Agatha Christie than Alan Dean Foster. “Take a good look. Check for clues.”

Ellie does. She flips it over and looks at the back too. Several people have scratched their initials deeply into the brass on the blank side of the chit.

“Whose initials are these?” she asks, trying to make the letters fit the names of people she knows, but to no avail.

“I’ll tell you in a second. Keep looking,” Laurie says, excitement in her voice. She clearly wants Ellie to figure this out on her own.

Ellie studies the coin again. Only on her final inspection of the face of the small chit does she notice a greater discrepancy. There’s not one ‘I’ on the round, brass disk, but two. Side by side, almost overlapping. Not counting the little aluminum chits that serve as change, Jackson brass dollars only come in ‘I’, ‘V’, and ‘X’. She’s heard that there are few square or octagonal coins with ‘L’, ‘C’, and ‘D’ floating around out there, but she’s never seen them. Neither she nor Joel make that kind of money.

“Laurie,” Ellie whispers harshly. “Is this counterfeit? If Maria sees this, she’ll shit a brick. This kind of stuff can get you kicked out of town! No joke.”

“Nope. Perfectly legal. You are looking at a piece of history,” Laurie says proudly. “That is the one and only Jackson Double-Dollar. The only two-dollar coin in town. It was made by accident back when Maria’s dad first started making money to circulate. Somebody accidentally struck the same coin twice. As a joke, they decided to let it slide. See those initials on the back?”

Ellie reads the faded letters. “PR. FS. GC. DC. VB.”

Laurie bobs her chin knowingly, crossing her arms under her large bust. “Paul Rey. Fletcher Swanwick. Gun Choi. Danielle Cooper. Victor Belmont. The founders of Jackson. The brain trust that dreamed this place up.”

“Cool,” Ellie nods, doing everything in her power not to look at the way Laurie’s crossed arms perfectly frame her big breasts. “Wait. Somebody had the name ‘Gun’? How cool is that?”

“Daniel’s dad. He died when I was nine, just a year after we got here. He was the original town doctor. He was a general practitioner. The black market had a heck of a time smuggling him out of the FEDRA hospital in Boston. They don’t let doctors go, you know.”

“Gun,” Ellie repeats. “That is so cool.”

“The Double-Dollar is piece of history. It’s good luck too, like I said. So don’t bury it or stick it in your sock drawer or anything like that. Sooner or later, you gotta spend it. That way the luck will keep circulating. My uncle told me all about it. He got his hands on it three years ago when he bought some wool for my aunt. He spent it at the saloon, and the next week he brought down an eight-point buck with just one arrow. So see? It totally works, Ellie.”

“So if he spent it, how did you get it, Laurie?”

“Got it when I babysat for Evan and Carla last week. But I’m giving it to you. So spend it, okay?”

“I will,” Ellie says, slipping it into her pocket. “I’ve got my eye on a pair of buckskin gloves at the general store. This will just about pay for them. Thanks, Laurie.”

“Where the hell you at, ponygirl?” someone shouts from the other side of the room.

“That’s Burt,” Ellie says, giving Laurie a quick hug, trying to ignore how amazing those boobs feel pressed against her. “I gotta get to him so he’ll stop shouting.”

Laurie giggles as Ellie slips into the crowd, searching for her boss, homing in, tracking him down one yell at a time.

“There you are,” he says standing inside the front door, refusing to let Maria take his coat. “I’m running a little late. Sorry about that.”

“Who’s watching the stable?” Ellie asks, giving him a hug. It’s her birthday party. Hugging her employer is allowed in moments like this.

“Dee Dee,” he answers.

“Dee Dee is a horse, Burt,” she reminds him.

“But he’s the oldest horse in town,” Burt says. “So I can trust him for a little while. Can’t stay long though. The real Dee Dee overdosed on heroin, you know, so I’d best keep an eye on that horse, just in case. Here.”

He reaches deep into his coat pocket and hands Ellie a little glass baby food jar with five dollars in an assorted denominations of aluminum chits rattling around inside.

_Holy cow. I know he keeps a mayonnaise jar full of change in his office. This must be half his stash._

“Damn, Burt,” she whispers, stunned at the generosity on display.

“Aw, just a little something extra for you, ponygirl” he nods. “I know how traumatizing the poop box can be.”

“Hauling the wheelbarrow full of poop around the paddock is the part that gives me the most nightmares,” she says, her nose crinkling, waving away fumes of imaginary stink with one hand.

“Don’t I know it!” he crows. “Why do you think I hired you in the first place?”

“I thought it was because I stole a horse and the poop box is your revenge against me.”

Burt nods deviously and Ellie shakes her head in mock resignation as he finally allows Maria to take his coat. “Where’s the booze at?” he asks the mayor as Ellie checks in with her other guests.

Shelly Hammond is there. She runs the town’s only restaurant, ‘The Electric Sugar Cookie Saloon + Disco’. She makes the best sugar cookies Ellie has ever tasted. Back at the school in Boston, Ellie’s friend Cherry Jackson had pulled off some minor miracles with the limited ingredients she’d had to work with, but Shelly has fresh flour, butter, and maple sugar. Nothing compares to the treats on sale at the saloon. She has a large ‘Great Value All Natural Sour Cream’ plastic bowl in her hands, covered with a dishtowel. Ellie’s face breaks into a wide smile when she sees it.

“Oh my God, please tell me those are sugar cookies!” Ellie gushes, rushing over to the woman, carefully threading around several people as she goes. She doesn’t want to be rude, but fresh cookies have arrived. Time is of the essence!

“Even better,” Shelly beams.

“Blackberry cheesecake? Apple cobbler? Pecan bites?” Ellie enthuses giddily, trying to think of every dessert on the menu at Shelly’s saloon. The cookies are available daily; the others are rotated through on a weekly basis. Dare a girl dream of Blackberry cheesecake for her birthday?

“Better,” Shelly says, and pulls away the concealing cloth with a flourish.

Inside the bowl is a CD in a plastic case, almost perfectly preserved against the wreckage of the last twenty years. On the cover, there is a man with long, dark hair and bright crimson blood smeared from his nose to his chin. Ellie instantly recognizes it. She had this CD in the dorm room she shared with Riley. Undoubtedly, when she failed to show at roll call following the night of her disappearance, FEDRA searched her room and, upon finding this music, built a great monument to it. Shelly had a copy of this CD too. After Ellie found it in the music bin at the saloon, she came in to play it every chance she got: after work, on the weekends, and before breakfast too… until that tragic day that the greatest CD in the history of the world vanished from the bin, just before Halloween.

“You said somebody stole this,” Ellie whispers in awe.

“After the twentieth or thirtieth time you came in to play it, yes. And I think I told you a bird flew off with it, actually.”

Ellie lifts it up with great reverence, smiling, at long last feeling in touch with God and the cosmos and the undying power of rock again.

“I wrote about this in my diary,” Ellie mumbles, joking, feigning heartbreak. “I made a big black mark in my calendar when it vanished. I’ve been working on a voodoo doll to get my revenge against the bird that stole it.”

Shelly knows when she’s being played. She shakes her head. “Uh-huh. Save the crocodile tears. It’s all yours now, Ellie. Enjoy.”

“Oh, Shelly… ShellyShellyShelly,” Ellie coos, feeling the universe fall neatly into place around her. “It’s time to _party_ , Shelly.”

“Save it for later tonight. Put that on, and I guarantee it will chase everyone out of your house,” she says, adding sardonically, “Or restaurant, as the case may be.”

“Oh hush. You can’t appreciate good music.”

“That’s not music, Ellie. It’s a giant wall of sound.”

“Pfft. A giant wall of awesome. I had this thing back in my dorm room. I drove my roommate crazy with it. She had to hide it from me sometimes.”

“I can believe that.”

“She just couldn’t appreciate the power of rock. You two would’ve got along great.”

“Ellie, you do understand that CD may be the _dumbest_ album ever recorded, right?”

“Dumbestly awesome.”

Shelly nods, thinking. “Y’know, I think Andrew W. K. would be very pleased with that assessment of it.”

“This…” Ellie says, eyes closed, CD clutched to her chest. “ _This_ is the only album I will ever need, Shelly.”

“I know. Promise not to play it until after I leave.”

Ellie chuckles.

“And never, ever bring it into the saloon. I will burn that place down if that’s what it takes to get away from that CD again. Deal?”

“Deal. I’m gonna go put this on the mantel. It deserves a place of honor in this house.”

Ellie hugs her friend.

“Careful,” Shelly squeaks. “Don’t let it touch me.”

Ellie laughs and turns for the mantel waiting across the room.

“Left you some cookies in the kitchen,” Shelly says.

“You’re the best!” Ellie says over her shoulder.

“Bury that CD in the backyard!” Shelly calls after the retreating girl.

“Never!” Ellie cackles. “It would kill the grass!”

The town sheriff, Sergeant Parker, formerly of the U.S. Army, and his deputy, Kimble Nelke, a former Firefly, are over by the roaring fireplace, admiring the rifle rack above the mantel. Ellie drifts over to them, CD in hand, greeting them with a friendly smile when she arrives.

“Chandler made that gun rack for you, right?” Parker asks.

“Yep. He carved it by hand,” Ellie says, beamingly proudly. “I got that for Joel’s birthday. Tommy told me when it was. Joel likes to pretend he never had a birthday. He just sprouted up in the garden, like corn.”

“That’s not pine,” Kim says, scratching his beard. “Is it?”

“Nope,” Ellie says. “It’s tamarack. Sort of like pine, but harder, I think. And it has a cool, soapy feel to it. Chandler says that kind of wood’s rough on tools, so he charged me a little extra to make it.”

“Why tamarack? Why not spruce? Or birch?” Kim asks.

She shrugs her shoulders and tries to look innocent. What on earth could she say to these men about three magical days spent at The Tamarack House? “I dunno… I just like it.”

“And that assault rifle there,” Parker says, pointing with his chin. “The Fireflies gave that to Joel for escorting you from Boston to Salt Lake City?”

“Yeah,” Ellie says, trying to smile and not to frown.

_That’s what he claims anyway._

“M16A4. Good gun,” Parker says. “The collapsible stock is a nice touch. Probably from a M4A1 or an aftermarket clone. But I’m not sure about the LMT tactical sights. Lewis Machine Tools made quality products, but I prefer a Magpul MBUS flip-up. Better accuracy, if you ask me.”

“It’s accurate enough. It’s _fully automatic_ ,” she says defensively. This is Joel’s gun, which makes it sort of her gun too. She has to stick up for it, defend its honor. “How accurate does it need to be when it can spew bullets super fast? Beside, if you’ve got to be accurate, then you can use the Winchester –”

She stops. She finally notices the Winchester is not resting in its usual spot on the pegs beneath the M16. In its place is a black shotgun that is very familiar to her. A Mossberg SA 20 Bantam autoloader, glossy blue-black finish with black polymer stock and grips, and a stainless steel ejection port. 20 gauge, short and light, perfect for someone her size. She thinks about it almost every day. She first saw it in the window of the general store, a shiny beauty recently recovered by a scavenger team sent west to some place called Driggs, a small town, the sort of out of the way, abandoned place that was safe to raid because everyone on earth had forgotten about it, unlike all the big cities, which were obvious targets, and why is she thinking about practical scavenging strategies when the most beautiful shotgun in all of Wyoming is hanging on her wall instead of lying in the back room of the general store alongside all the other items the people in town have put on layaway?

“That’s my shotgun,” she says as though she is dreaming.

“Yes, it is,” Parker says.

“I’ve got this gun on layaway over at Andy’s store,” she says, her mind still not willing to put all the pieces together. “I’m making payments on it. Andy said he’d let it go for eighty bucks.”

“Is that a fact?” Kim chuckles.

She looks at both of the men. She points at the gun with a slightly shaky finger. “I have that on layaway,” she repeats. “Andy let me pay eight dollars as a down payment for it. Ten percent up front. That’s what he said.”

“How much have you paid on it so far?” Parker asks her, a twinkle in his eye.

“Ten dollars and thirty-five cents total,” she says, eyes wide. An electric energy is beginning to coalesce around her. A faint, buzzing drone fills her ears. A smile begins to form, consuming her face by slow inches. “I was going to pay him another dollar and some change, day after tomorrow. Plus a bunch of my birthday money. Otherwise I’m gonna be paying it off until I’m an old lady.”

“We paid it off for you,” Parker says. “Me, Kim, and Dan covered most of the bill. Tommy and Daryl chipped in a few dollars too. And Joel, of course. We all pitched in on it. Andy lopped a few bucks off the price too.”

“We were impressed with your target shooting at the fall festival,” Kim says. “Impressive stuff, especially from someone in a sundress and sandals.” He winks at Parker though Ellie doesn’t notice. Her eyes are on the shotgun. But that day at the fall festival, Kim’s eyes had been on the sexy redhead in the green and white dress. Her shooting hadn’t been the only impressive thing about her.

Parker nods. “You’re gonna need a good gun now that you’re old enough for patrols and tower duties.”

“Oh man,” she breathes, running her fingers along the cold steel length of it as it rests in the cradle of the wooden rack. If it wasn’t such a terrible idea to start waving a shotgun around in a crowded roomful of people, Ellie would already be blasting imaginary clickers to chunky bits.

Parker chuckles. “Andy said it was love at first sight when you passed by the window and saw it. And a kid only becomes an adult once in their life. So I figured, what the hell. I asked Kim and Dan to help. And the rest is history.”

Parker is hugged. Kim is hugged. Somewhere in this house, Daniel Choi is about to be hugged too. A redheaded homing missile is zooming about in search of him.

“I feel pretty good about that,” Kim says, watching her disappear into the wall of people. She looks damn good in her tight black jeans.

“Me too,” Parker replies, and puts a box of five magnum shotgun shells on the mantel next to the Andrew W. K. CD for her to discover later.

Joel comes over with a plastic half-gallon milk jug full of apple brandy. He tops off their glasses.

“She like it?” he asks.

Kim nods, sipping the liquor.

“She sure did,” Parker responds. “You should’ve come over here and shared the moment with us.”

“Nah. I only chipped in three bucks for it. It was more a gift from you two than me. Besides,” Joel says, “I’ve got somethin’ even better I’m gonna give her in a little bit. Be sure to stick around for that, fellas.”

Kim nods again. “So long as this brandy keeps flowing, I’m not going anywhere, man.”

**. . .**

The sun will be down soon. The party shows no signs of ending. Wintertime is boring. Only a few types of jobs are still needed at this time of year. Nearly everyone spends most of their days inside their own homes. Any excuse to go somewhere else is pounced on, and tonight, Ellie’s birthday party is the place to be.

The birthday girl hides in the kitchen, worn down by the non-stop requirements of being a good hostess. She sips at a hot mug of creamy, sugared chicory root and roasted barley, and eyes the back door speculatively.

_Should’ve snuck out with Mark. He had the right idea._

Joel is out there, strumming on a guitar. He and Tommy had sung a song for the crowd earlier, something about having two dollars in a jukebox and five dollars in a bottle, but now she can hear Maria harmonizing with Joel on the choruses as he sings about how life is a highway.

She sneaks a sugar cookie from a plate loaded with them and nibbles on it. A homemade ceramic jug of locally made maple syrup rests on the table next to the cookies. She grins and chews, already making big plans for a pancake breakfast tomorrow. Ellie had never tasted fresh maple syrup before moving here.

_Professor Swanwick says this part of Wyoming is about the only place maple trees grow in the whole damn state, so we're pretty lucky. Otherwise, we’d have to haul it down from Canada, he says._

She wipes the corners of her mouth and debates whether or not to have another cookie. She can hear Andy Givener out there, entertaining everyone with his endless supply of funny stories.

“…never seen somebody get so excited over a jokebook before! Shoulda jacked the price up! I coulda closed the store early!” Though muffled by the kitchen wall, his bullhorn of a voice carries easily over the laughter of the crowd.

Ellie smiles over the steaming rim of her mug.

_Is he talking about me? That butthead! Oughta go out there and kick him right in his wooden shin. Take him down a peg._

_Take him down a peg leg._

She snickers to herself.

“He’s tellin’ tales on you, Sven.” The approaching voice makes Ellie smile.

“Ah, that could be anybody he’s talking about, dude,” she calls out. “Everybody loves pun books!”

“C’mon, Ellie,” Tommy says from the doorway, “Get out here! This is _your_ birthday party. We’re tired of celebratin’ without you, girl. Hustle up! Show your pretty face for a few minutes, okay? It’s not gonna kill you.”

She smiles at the compliment. “Nuh-uh.”

“Uh huh,” he snarks. It’s hard to be more goofily childish than Tommy when he really applies himself.

She sticks her tongue out at him. He has no idea how much she struggles with her attraction for him at times like this. “You don’t know. It might.”

“C’mon now, be honest. Why you hidin’ back here, girl?” Tommy chides.

She exhales, slumps a little, and shakes her head. “I dunno… I guess I kinda needed a break, Tommy. So many people out there. Kind of… overwhelming… you know?”

“I get that,” Tommy replies. With a jerk of his head, he indicates the living room behind him. “Not everybody is a natural performer like my brother is.”

“I’ve never seen him happier than when he’s playing for people, that’s for sure,” she says, sipping her chicory.

“Shoulda seen him back in the day. When Sarah was really little, he’d leave her with mom – my mom, I mean, not her mom; God only knows where that woman was – and he’d go to one or the other of the colleges around town and play and sing in the coffee shops.”

Ellie blinks, her eyes wide. “No shit? _Really?_ ”

“Sure. Closest he could get to bein’ a real performer, y’know? He was pretty good too. Drawin’ a pretty regular crowd by the end. Not a huge bunch of groupies, but he had some fans, no doubt about it.”

“Why’d he stop doing it?”

“Sarah got older. Old enough to wonder why her daddy wasn’t around on the weekends. So he quit doin’ it. Got a job in construction and sorta gave up on the singin’ and stuff. I could tell he missed it, but I never heard him complain about it.”

“He played at the fall festival,” she says proudly. “And the Christmas party too. He’s got fans again. Shelly wants him to play at the saloon on Sundays. He’s thinking about it. He’ll have groupies too. I know Laurie has a crush on him. I think April does too.” Ellie rolls her eyes playfully. “They’ve both got pretty huge boobs… if he’s into that sort of thing, you know.”

Tommy chuckles. “See? What did I tell you, girl? Remember what I said? When you were still settlin’ in here and feelin’ blue? Jackson gives everybody a second chance.”

“That’s true. They say Jackson has everything. It even has groupies for Joel. Maybe Laurie will throw her panties at him if he does an encore. Burt tells me women used to do that at concerts.”

“They sure did,” Tommy chuckles. “And it seems to me that Jackson’s been pretty good to you too, Sven.”

Ellie smiles and shrugs her shoulders. “Yeah. It’s good here in Jackson. I’m not saying it isn’t. But…. I dunno.” She exhales, a ‘what can you do’ expression forming on her face. A lot of thoughts are roiling around inside her. She picks one of the safer ones to talk about. “Wish I’d been around to see that stuff you and Joel are always talking about. Colleges and coffee shops and junk like that, y’know.”

Tommy sighs heavily. “Probably worked out better for you that you missed it. That’s my opinion anyway.”

“Why not? Dude, I would kill for just one night back there. Back then, I mean. Back when everything worked. I’d love to see it. Street lights and cars zooming around and people shopping and… Fuck, I wish I could’ve been born earlier.”

Tommy looks at the ceiling and searches for the right words. “Once you’d seen it… you’d have a harder time lettin’ it go.”

Ellie says nothing.

Tommy continues, sounding a little tired. “I saw quite a bit of that. Folks holdin’ on to how things had been. Tryin’ to, anyway. Young people and old ones too. Tryin’ to keep the world together even though it’d already fell apart. Holdin’ on to ways of doin’ things that just didn’t work any more.” His arms crossed, he tucks his chin and points one finger at Ellie. “You grew up after all that mess had played out. The world I had when I was your age is, whatchacallit… a fairy tale now, I reckon.”

“Yeah, I guess. Maybe.” She stares into her coffee mug.

Tommy scratches his cheek idly. This isn’t an easy thing for him to talk about. “Wasn’t easy for me to let go of it, I can tell you that for sure.”

Ellie looks up. “And Joel?”

“Came a little easier for him, I suppose. But it wasn’t…”

He sucks at his teeth, shakes his head, clears his throat. He isn’t sure he should say what he is about to say, but that had been the entire point of coming in here in the first place: to get Ellie alone for a minute or two.

“Listen, Ellie… Maria… she tells me that you… uhh… you got intentions… on my brother.”

Ellie gulps. She wants to look away, but can’t. She feels like a deer in the headlights of an onrushing car. She feels the heat from her reddening cheeks heating her face and the back of her neck.

“Um…” she grins sheepishly, her voice higher than normal. “Maaaayyybeeee…”

Nervous now, she giggles, deflecting with humor. She doesn’t know what else to do.

“See? This is what I get for trusting you people. I tell you about my big plans for a garden gnome. I tell Maria that I want to bone Joel. Sheesh. Can nobody keep a secret in this town?”

“Look… I like you, Ellie. Hell, I love you, girl. You’re family now.” Tommy breaks eye contact, looking down at the floor. This kid is so damn young, but life has toughened her up some, and she is sweet, and with legs like she has, and hips that give her that wiggle that a man can’t help but notice when she walks through town… Maybe it wouldn’t be so wrong for Joel and Ellie to…

“Aww. I love you too, Tommy. You know that. I love your whole family. You guys are the only family I’ve ever known. Heck, I’d be the one babysitting your son right now if Joel wasn’t being such a dick and making me attend my own birthday party. He’s such an ass sometimes.” She giggles.

Tommy chuckles, looks at her, smiles, sees how pretty she is, sees how good she looks in that satin shirt, and thinks how lucky a man his big brother would be if he would just let this funny, big-hearted, pretty girl into his life just a little bit more than he already has.

“Do you love him, Ellie?” His voice is serious.

Her tone matches his. “I do. I love your brother more than anything, Tommy.”

He grins the same lopsided grin Joel has, the one that always melts her heart. He looks up at the ceiling, at the cracked and patched ceiling over the kitchen table. With so many people in the house today, it is quite warm in here despite the snow piled up outside.

The old world was gone, that’s what Anthony had been so fond of saying, back before he left the crew on the day the day he picked a fight with a Boston QZ army patrol out on the road, on that cold, snowy day when he almost won the last battle in his one-man war against the forces of the old world that he hated so much, giving the rest of them the distraction they needed to slip past those soldiers and get into the city. Anthony didn’t want to go to Boston anyway. Too many rules there, too many people living like the old ways still mattered. Anthony had hated the old world. Tommy knows Anthony was a psycho, but the ex-soldier had been right about a lot of things. The old ways, the old rules are gone. Long gone. They are building a new world here in Jackson, laying the foundation for a future that might really count for something one day. And his brother and this girl are a big part of it. And if they love each other, and if they don’t care about the sizeable stretch of years between them, well, then it isn’t any of his damned business.

“Are… are you okay, Tommy? You kinda spaced out on me for a second there.”

_Joel gets the same look on his face sometimes. It’s never anything good that he’s thinking about when he does it either. How many bad things did he and Tommy see? How many bad things did they do?_

“Joel… there’s more to him than he lets on sometimes,” Tommy begins in a way that suggests a lot of words are coming so best just stand aside and make room for them. “He’s seen some shit, done some shit. Shit was done _to him_. Shit he never talks about. Not even to me. And he tells me the stuff he won’t tell anybody else.”

She sets the hot mug of sugar-drenched chicory down, studies his face. Tommy is so light-hearted most of the time, unless he’s killing bandits or infected. She’s never seen him so serious, not without a gun in his hand anyway.

“Tommy…” she begins but lets it trail off. She doesn’t know what she wants to say.

“And he’s not really the selfish bastard as he seems to be. Not really. Took me a long time to understand that, Ellie. It’s weird, I guess, but a man can be so selfish sometimes that it comes all the way around and sorta turns into a crazy way of being kind. He’s okay with people hating him. He takes everything on his shoulders and makes the choices others need to make but can’t. And we’ve all hated him for it at one time or another. Alexa, Tess, Me, Lisa. We all hated him for making decisions for us.”

“God knows I’ve been mad at him sometimes too,” she admits with a long sigh.

Tommy nods. “Yeah. But that’s just how he is. He worked his ass off for Sarah. He wasn’t home much. Didn’t get to spend near enough time with her, not as much as he wanted. Hell, I didn’t have no kids, so she spent as much time with me as she did with her own dad some days. She was always with one of us, me or her grandma, so she was taken care of. Don’t misunderstand me. She loved her daddy, but she missed him somethin’ terrible sometimes. He knew that but what else could he do? He wanted her to have a shot at a better life, better than the big ball of nothin’ our shitty dad gave us. He worked his fingers to the bone for that little girl to give her a good home and lots of the silly stuff she wanted. He had to put up with some real shit sometimes, let himself get talked to like a damn dog by some of those asshole foremen we worked for, doing what he had to do to keep a job. He could swallow his pride when he had to. I watched him do it enough times. I was always after him to quit the really bad jobs, to take a stand, and tell the boss to fuck off… but he wouldn’t do it. He kept that temper of his all bottled up. He could see the big picture back then. I couldn’t. I was too young, I guess. But he kept me employed, kept going to bat for me when I probably shoulda got fired, honestly, and he kept Sarah safe and fed under a nice roof. And when it all went to shit and we lost her… she died because I didn’t get to them fast enough. It’s my fault, but he won’t ever say that. He’ll tell you it was him… if he ever talks about it at all…he’ll say that that he was the one who carried his little girl right up to the soldier that shot her… Sarah had hurt her leg when I wrecked my truck tryin’ to get us out of town. I thought I could… but I fucked it up and we got flipped over on our side… And Joel was carrying her. And runners were everywhere. Everybody was in a panic. Seems like half of downtown was on fire… but bad as it was, nobody knew about the real shit that was comin’… that first night… none of us… we almost couldn’t understand just how bad it was… and how bad it was going to get… we thought we could still trust the army… the government… We didn’t know. Jesus. Nobody knew. I killed that soldier, Ellie, but not before he’d shot at my brother and killed my niece. She died right there in Joel’s arms, and all I could do was stand there and wonder why I hadn’t run just a little bit faster to get back to them. I thought I was helpin’, holdin’ those psycho things back, givin’ my brother and my little niece time to run… to get away…but all I was doin’ was lettin’ ‘em twist in the wind and get shot to hell while I stayed behind too long. Hell, the only reason we were on foot was because I wrecked the truck. Stupid. Shoulda checked before pullin’ out into the intersection…”

Ellie tries to swallow. Her throat is dry. No one has ever really spoken to her about the night Sarah died. Not even Maria. Not like this. She scoops up the mug of chicory in trembling hands and takes a deep gulp.

“He oughta hate me for lettin’ her down like that. But he doesn’t. He kept me alive. And I came to hate _him_ instead, Ellie. _I_ _really_ _fucking hated_ _him_ and I’m not ashamed to say it. Some of the things we done, the messed up shit we did to other people. I hated what we did. Hated what we became. But we never starved. Never fell prey to people worse than us… or just as bad as us, I guess. We had a huge fuckin’ crew for a few years, damn near thirty of us, as I recall. A goddamned army of raiders, that’s what we were. He ever tell you about any of that?”

The empty mug is on the countertop. She doesn’t remember setting it down. Her hands are still shaking. She clutches her fingers together to still them; her eyes never leave Tommy’s. They have the same eyes, these brothers. Their mother’s eyes? Their father’s?

“Not much,” Ellie says softly. “He’s mentioned a few people here and there, but he doesn’t talk about what you guys did.”

“Terrible things. We did _terrible_ things, Ellie. We were like a buncha goddamn vultures, raiding towns, breaking into QZ’s as they collapsed, taking everything that wasn’t nailed down. We laid ambushes out on the highway, back when there was still lots of cars on the roads, whenever we weren’t moving on to the next target, rolling down the highway in all our trucks over that cracked, busted up, rusting shit pile of a country like a tidal wave as everything we knew fell apart, killing anybody who got in our way, even if they were just people trying to hang on to the same food or blankets that we were coming to steal. They weren’t bad people, Ellie. Not most of the time. They were just people who didn’t want to starve or freeze. But neither did we. That’s all it was, really. So much was contaminated or maybe everyone was afraid it was. There wasn’t near enough to go around and so we killed them, if we had to, if they wouldn’t walk away. We killed a lot of bad guys too, don’t get me wrong. But we were just as bad as those bastards we fight outside the walls of Jackson sometimes, the ones who can’t build anything worth havin’ so they try to take from those who put in all the hard work instead. Hell, a couple of times, we’d roll into some little town, cocked and locked, take out a group of hunters or bandits or whoever it was who thought they were runnin’ things before we showed up. Christ almighty, the people being kept there would think we were a buncha goddamn heroes who’d come ridin’ to their rescue like in a movie or some shit…. But pretty quick they’d figure out why we were really there… If we were lucky, we didn’t have to kill too many of ‘em before they gave up their stuff…”

He stares out the kitchen window behind her. There is snow falling out there, but all Tommy sees are flames from the burning homes he lit long ago. A gentle wind presses against the glass, but Tommy hears the old screams, still echoing down through the years. He clenches his jaw. The memories never stay buried forever.

His voice is old and very tired when he speaks. “Some nights… I can’t sleep… knowin’ what I did.”

Ellie wants to hug him but something tells her that he might start to cry if she does.

“Joel kept me alive, Ellie. Kept me alive when everybody else around us was dyin’ or turnin’, when the whole goddamn world was burnin’ to the ground around us. Kept tellin’ me what to do, bossin’ me around, so I’d have my big brother to pin it all on one day when it was over. Kept me alive so I could blame him, and hate him, so I could push it all off on him when things got better and we didn’t have to live like that no more… so I could tell him to fuck off once we’d finally made it to Boston, safe and sound. Almost thirty of us in the crew at one time or another, but only three of us made it to Boston by the end. And I was one of them. Because of _him_ , Ellie. I hated him, _but he kept me alive_. Get it? He made the choices I never could and he let me hate his guts all the same. When I heard about Maria and her dad and their team heading west, after I’d quit the Fireflies, when her dad and all his engineers and college buddies had decided that they’d found the perfect spot… the place to set up this secret community… isolated, hidden, with it’s own hydro dam… a place where FEDRA or the Fireflies would never find it… that’s why all the roads leading into this town are wrecked, y’know. We blocked off one or two, so we could use ‘em if we had too. Remember that big traffic jam on the bridge? Where you had to leave the El Camino? That was us. The rest of the roads, we blew up. Sent ‘em sliding right down the side of the mountain. We shut ourselves off from the world so we wouldn’t go to hell with the rest of it…”

“I never thought about that,” she says, quiet as a mouse. “It makes sense. Me and Joel had a hell of a time getting up here to find you guys.”

“Joel knew enough about our plans to know where I was going. He even helped us gather up supplies to help set this place up, though he was never there when Tess dropped them off at our secret camp. We loaded up our trucks in a little town just outside of Boston, and headed out for Jackson, Wyoming. The real Jackson, I mean. Turns out I didn’t know the whole plan. Only five of the leaders did. Best way to keep the secret, yeah?”

“In case the Fireflies came looking for you,” she says, nodding, understanding.

“Yeah. But I wouldn’t’ve told Joel about the real destination, even if I had’ve known. I was fuckin’ done with him, Ellie, and Joel knew I was. He didn’t ask to come along, didn’t ask to be part of this better world. I went to his place one mornin’ and confronted him about it, all pissed off and ready to fight and wantin’… I dunno… something from him… answers, maybe. Or an apology. Or _somethin_ ’. All we did was holler and fight and I stormed out and didn’t look back. He just let me roll out of his life like it was no big deal… Me, the only fuckin’ family he had left… and even after all he’d done to get me through the worst of those days, he just let me go… Lookin’ back on it now, I think that he let me leave because he knew it would be easier for me to start over without havin’ him around. I didn’t need the baggage, you know? I had to start fresh without him and he knew it.”

Tommy rubs his jaw and thinks about what it is that he is trying to tell her, what he can say that will let him keep his promise to Joel but still help her to understand. The three pounds of fresh, delicious bacon he had put in her fridge earlier is a fine gift, but this moment is his real present to her. He wants her to be truly happy with her life in Jackson, with her future with his brother, with leaving behind any other fate she’d had to cut herself loose from when she came here with Joel. More than anything, he wants her to sleep well at night. He’d give anything to be able to do that reliably himself, and if it means he has to take some of his brother’s godawful burden on his own shoulders for her sake, well, he’ll do that, and gladly. Joel is right. It’s what you do for the people you love.

She says nothing as she watches him gathering his thoughts. His voice is hoarse when he speaks again.

“We got everything in Jackson, y’know.”

She nods. “That’s what everybody says.”

“Electricity, democracy, hot and cold running water.”

“All that and more,” she smiles gamely, not sure where he’s going with this.

“But do you know the best thing Jackson has to offer, Ellie?”

“Norwegian nicknames?” she asks, smiling, just a little, combating a growing worry with humor, like she always does.

“That too, yeah. But that ain’t what I’m talkin’ about.”

Ellie nods knowingly. “Second chances,” she says.

Tommy smiles sadly. “Yeah. Second chances. That’s somethin’ we’ve got that you just can’t find much of in this world anymore.”

“Yeah,” Ellie replies, thinking she understands. Tommy knows otherwise.

“Whatever a person did before they got there… they can leave it at the gate,” Tommy says gravely, his eyes locked on hers. “However they found their way here. Whoever they were. Whatever they did. No matter what their burden is. They can lay it down at the gate. Leave it behind. They don’t have to carry it another step.”

Ellie nods once, slowly.

“Jackson offers forgiveness, Ellie. We forgive a person of whatever they did in the past. Ain’t nobody here got clean hands except the little ones born inside these walls. We’ve all done bad stuff on the road to get here. Terrible stuff.”

Ellie closes her eyes. She remembers the machete in her hands. The ruined face looking up at her. She shivers.

“But each of us can start over, Ellie. I did. Joel did. You can start over too.”

“I’ve been doing a lot better, Tommy,” she says, her tone a bit defensive. It’s no secret how depressed she was when she first arrived, but she’s worked so hard to pull herself out of it. It’s not fair to bring that up now, after she’s -

Tommy’s voice is very kind, without even a hint of scolding. “I told Joel the same thing I’m tellin’ you. I told him we could give him a second chance. Told him that the first time you guys got here. Back at the dam.”

Ellie sighs unhappily at the memory. “The day he tried to pawn me off on you.”

“He thought it was the best thing for you,” Tommy replies, mostly telling the truth.

Ellie snorts derisively. She wishes that Tommy had never started this conversation. “He does shit like that a lot. Like he always knows what’s best for you.”

“Leavin’ you behind was gonna rip a great big hole in him,” Tommy insists, “but he was willin’ to do it if that was the best thing for you.”

“Yeah, well, he should’ve asked me, dude.”

“That’s just how he is, Ellie. That’s what he’s willing to do. Fuck, there’s nothin’ he _won’t do_. Even if it hurts you, or if it hurts him, it doesn’t matter. He’ll take it all on his shoulders for you, no matter how much it weighs him down. He’ll do any vile, evil, godawful horrible thing for you… He’ll do it… if he _loves_ you. That man’ll do whatever’s gotta be done just so _you don’t have to do it_. So you can keep your hands clean. Or cleaner than his, I guess… He did it for me, when I was on the road with him. And he did it for you too.”

“I watched him do some bad stuff,” Ellie replies hoarsely. “Kind of hard to forget some of it.”

“I’m not just talkin’ about the stuff you remember, Ellie. Do you understand?”

The warm chicory goes cold in the pit of Ellie’s stomach. “What… what are you trying to tell me, Tommy?”

_Have they talked? Did Joel tell him about what really happened in Salt Lake City? He’d tell Tommy if he was going to tell anyone._

She suddenly remembers an evening last year when Joel had come home scuffed up, battered, his shirt torn at the shoulder, his jaw swollen, covered in bruises under his clothes. He’d been in a fight, she was sure of it, but he wouldn’t talk to her about it. No one in the town ever said anything, and no one was holding a grudge before or after. She could never figure out who he’d gotten into it with. Tommy was gone hunting for the next few days after that, having volunteered out of the blue to join the next party leaving town to go up to the mountains for a while. Even when he came back with a juicy wild boar across his shoulders, he and Joel didn’t talk much for a month after that. The brothers had finally come to some kind of unspoken peace after that.

She blinks. She’s never put the pieces together before…

“Do you _understand_ , Ellie?” He speaks through his teeth. Tears are gathering in the corners of his eyes.

She nods, afraid she might cry too. He is carrying some part of this awful thing for Joel now. She is sure of it. And he is asking her to shoulder just a tiny part of it too. To keep this secret with him, without ever knowing exactly what it is, to keep it and never talk about it, to keep it and trust these brothers to carry most of the burden so that she might be free of it, to trust them and let it go, maybe forever, if that’s what it took.

_“We can just go back to Tommy’s.” That’s what he said. “Just go back to Tommy’s and live our lives.”_

_He never lied to me. Not until we left the Fireflies. I woke up in the backseat and he lied. Then we drove all day. West then north. Then east. Then south to Jackson._

_I didn’t even think about that until now. I was so pissed off at him. I spent so much time making a big show of not talking to him and pretending to be asleep I didn’t even wonder why we were in the truck for so long or why the sun kept shining in through different windows. But that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the big clue. I looked at that map every day when we rode Callus south to Salt Lake City. Takes a long time to get from Jackson to Salt Lake on a horse. But it only takes a few hours in a truck. It sure as fuck doesn’t take all day._

_I saw the signs from the back seat windows. We drove through Nevada. We drove through fucking Idaho._

_We stopped to siphon gas in buttfucking Montana, for fuck’s sake. I was so angry and fucked up and sad that I didn’t even ask him why the fuck we were in Montana._

_I didn’t even ask myself why we were there. I was just so fucking sad and pissed off._

_Why would we drive so far out of our way to get back to Tommy’s? Unless Joel was worried we might be followed and he didn’t want to lead them straight to Jackson._

_Oh, Jesus. It’s been right in front of me this whole time._

_We didn’t leave Utah._

_We escaped._

Her nose begins to run. She snuffles in surprise, her eyes big, wet, and round.

_Oh God, we escaped._

_He took me there, just like he said._

_But something happened once we got there. Something bad._

_He didn’t just grab me and sneak out, like I thought._

_He did something so awful that he had to lie to me about it._

Ellie swallows, her throat painfully dry.

_I thought he broke his promise. Sometimes, I wondered if he even took me to the Fireflies. Or maybe he did take me but they wouldn’t pay him or they wanted to keep me in Salt Lake instead of letting me leave with him, so he snuck me out or something._

_But what if they had something worse planned for me? Something really bad? And maybe he found out about it somehow._

_I thought he lied to make it easier for him._

_But what if he lied to make it easier for me?_

_God, what if it’s both. Jesus, knowing Joel, it’s probably both._

Watching her struggle with it, Tommy offers knowingly, “He loves you more than he’ll ever say, Ellie.” He sniffs, blinks, wipes away the wetness from his cheek with a thumb.

_He lied. And then he closed the door on that lie. Joel doesn’t open doors once he’s closed them._

_He’s taken good care of me. He’s still taking good care of me. He’s taught me a ton of stuff._

_He wants this to work._

_But if we’re gonna make this work…_

Ellie inhales deeply, slowly, as tears leave her closed eyes and begin to roll down her face. “I understand, Tommy. I do.”

_If we’re gonna make this work, that door’s gonna have to stay shut._

_Can I do that? Can I live with that? Can I live with not knowing? God, do I even want to know at this point?_

_Fuck, I’ve managed pretty good so far, I guess._

Tommy tries to smile, but somehow it’s almost a frown. “I just don’t want you worryin’ about stuff you _can’t change_ , Sven. That’s all. One time I heard Swanwick say to my wife that the past is a museum where you can look all you want but you can’t touch nothin’. Course, it sounded better the way he said it, I’m sure.”

Ellie chuckles sadly.

_Yeah. I can do that. I can make that sacrifice. It’s what you do for the people you love._

Ellie tries to smile, but she’s having the same problem Tommy is. “Whatever it was he did for me, he did it because he loves me.”

“He surely does,” he says solemnly. There’s a weight on Tommy that Ellie can see, now that she knows what to look for.

She dabs at her eyes with a dishtowel. She won’t cry anymore. Not tonight, anyway. Not with everyone out there. She doesn’t want to show Joel and her guests red eyes. Not after all the work they’d put into this party for her.

Tommy gestures at the door broadly, with a wide sweep of his arm, smiling, back to his old self in the blink of an eye.

“Now are you gonna get your little butt out here and say something to all these fine people? What’s it gonna take to convince you? Lemme paint a picture for you. There’s sugar cookies, rock candy, three pounds of bacon (that’s from me, by the way. You’re welcome), a quart of fresh maple syrup, some gentle and girly homemade scented soap brought all the way from our nice new neighbors way over in Hailey, Idaho – and at great risk to life and limb by Kim and Sergeant Parker (you should thank them a bunch, just my suggestion. It wasn’t an easy trip to get over there and meet with those people, but who else has a workin’ short wave radio in these parts, yeah?), we got some dee-licous summer sausage, a smoked ham, a big bowl of yummy apple butter, a very nice quilt made by the sweet old ladies of the church, the best coleslaw I have tasted in years (that Mrs. Hauser, she sure knows how to cook, don’t she?), and I do believe that ol’ Andy Givener is passing around a gallon jug of that oh-so-fine moonshine that he swears he don’t make because his wife would kill him if he did. She’s such a good soul. Holds our church together with her angelic light, and that’s a fact. She’d be here tonight, by the way, ‘cept she’s babysittin’ my boy, so when you see her tomorrow, be sure to thank her for the quilt and make extra sure you don’t tell her about the moonshine Andy found on his way over here, okay?”

“He keeps finding quart jars of it in the woods, isn’t that the story?” she laughs, taking his hand as he reaches out for her, a confident, crooked smirk on his face, convinced he’s closed the deal. He had. She realizes she isn’t nervous about the crowd anymore. His hand is large, and rough, and warm, and she squeezes it, feeling herself grounded by his assuredness.

_Damn, Tommy is smooth. Joel wasn’t kidding._

“Yep. I reckon it must be leprechauns leavin’ it for him.”

“Or gnomes,” she suggests slyly.

“Gnomes make moonshine? Never heard that one, Sven.”

He leads her out of the kitchen, her arm threaded through his. Her voice echoes off the walls as she departs with him.

“Sure they do. Gnomes are cool like that.”

**. . .**

Unable to remain hidden in the kitchen, unable to find even one more excuse to stay out of sight, she walks into the room, her arm snugged through Tommy’s, hoping he’ll catch her if she suddenly keels over from stage fright. She knows her legs look good in her almost-new black denim jeans. She unexpectedly remembers Kristi Chau, lying in the shadows of that old Shell Station, legs wrapped in black denim, and tries to shove the unwanted thought away. The men in the room see her. The women do too, especially the older ones. They remember turning heads the way this girl does now. She doesn’t really feel any older today but she is just beginning to appreciate that she is attractive. She makes her way through the crowd and feels like a beautiful woman for the first time in her life. She wants to cry from joy but swallows the tears. The love she feels in this room is almost overwhelming to an orphan who grew up feeling so very little of it. Tommy hovers close for support, for those first few vital moments, until she is used to the attention. It’s like stepping into a cold river. It’s not so bad once you get used to it. Tommy drifts away without her noticing it. She smiles. He has disappeared. Joel always said his little brother was smooth.

There are so many people in their home tonight. She knows it’s not actually half the town, but it certainly feels like it. They’re all here: every friend she has in Jackson. Only a few of them are anywhere close to her age. She wishes she could connect with more of the younger people in town, but she can’t. She’s seen too much and done too much. She can’t relate to them. People her age don’t understand her very well, they’ve still got their innocence, or most of it anyway. The teenagers came here as part of a caravan, protected by lots of adults. Ellie road here on a motorcycle guarded by one incredibly brave, incredibly violent man who nonetheless almost died on her at one point until she brought him back from the brink of death. She made a leap of faith for him, vaulting across the killing waters that were carrying him away because what is death in the face of losing someone you love? She knows that pain well, too. She found the will to pull the trigger in the cold rain of a Boston night. She found the will to leap across the rushing water in Salt Lake City. She almost died both times, though in different ways. Pieces of her tattered soul, gone, lost, carried away in the rain and the surging torrent of her past.

She knows isn’t like the other teens here. They haven’t lost what she’s lost. But so what if most of her friends are older than her? It just means she interesting in a way in which teenagers rarely are to adults.

The room is full of music. Joel has been taking requests for a while. He is sitting on the sofa by the big window, strumming and singing “All Summer Long” with Maria joining him on the choruses, much to the delight of the crowd. However, Burt pulls her close as she passes by and whispers to her that he considers that song to be a blasphemy against both Lynyrd Skynyrd and Warren Zevon. Ellie nods solemnly, agreeing completely with her music-loving friend, but secretly she has no idea who the fuck those people are. Leonard? Warren? Never heard of them. She won’t tell Burt though.

_I love old-as-dirt Burt and it would break his heart if he discovered that I’ve never heard of his dear friend, Mr. Skinner._

Outside, the evening sky grows ever dimmer and dark, gray clouds hide the tops of the mountains. It is going to snow later tonight.

She shakes all the offered hands, says nice things, smiles for each and every happy birthday wish she receives. She gets several compliments from the men about her pretty satin shirt, many of the women really like her fancy boots. It is exhausting in a strange way to be at the center of this much attention. It takes forever to speak to everyone. Ellie is not an extrovert like Tommy is. She’s happy to light up the room for a few people, but crowds are difficult to deal with for long. She considers running upstairs to get her one of her trusty pun books, but then realizes that everyone would be looking at her, all at the same time, and the thought of telling jokes for this many people at once makes her stomach do flip-flops. She doesn’t want to spew chunks in front of everyone, not on her birthday, not all over the front of her nicest shirt.

Gratefully, gracefully, she finally sits next to Joel on the sofa. Even in a room this crowded, Joel has made sure that this space has been reserved for her arrival all evening. She watches, her hands clasped together between her knees, smiling, so proud of him as he finishes singing ‘Country Roads’ with Maria. She is jealous of Maria’s huskier voice; she wishes her own weren’t so clear and high-pitched and girly. She wants to sound weathered and experienced and grownup and sexy, like Maria. They’ve all assured her that she has a beautiful singing voice, but she isn’t sure. They tell her that her clear, warm soprano meshes nicely with Maria’s smoky contralto and Tommy’s slightly raspy tenor. Joel’s strong baritone holds their harmony together at the bottom end while Ellie’s high, smooth voice is the pleasant contrast to that at the top. These are technical music-y words she doesn’t really know, so she has to trust that it’s not all a bunch of bullshit. That’s how it is with family, she’s discovering. You trust because you love. Simple as that. They harmonize well, they tell her again and again. She believes them, she’s just not sure she contributes that much to their sound. She can’t hear herself the way they hear her. She’s nervous. She knows what’s coming next, even if most of the people in the room don’t. Joel and Maria begin to work their way through the last chorus together and Ellie finds her heart is in her throat.

The last notes of the song dies on Joel’s guitar, getting lost beneath the applause that fills the room. From the second floor, Tommy comes down the stairs with a beautiful glossy black guitar in his hands. The room falls silent at the sight of it. Andy had had this beauty squirreled away in back of the general store since it was found sealed safely inside a rugged case, hidden in an attic in the town of Rock Springs last year. Ellie’s sure Andy didn’t let it go cheap, not even as a gift for the Miller brothers, who rank among his best scroungers.

Tommy crosses the room, the crowd parting for him as he swaggers towards the couch and gives the beautiful black guitar to Joel, who subsequently makes a big deal of handing it to the girl sitting so sweetly at his side.

At Maria’s urging, everyone in the room cheers. All Ellie can do is sit there next to Joel and blush beautifully, clutching the guitar to her the way she used to clutch her Snoopy doll when she was very little and all alone and too scared to sleep. She wraps both arms around it and tries to give her best silly smile to the crowd. Humor is how she copes.

As the applause fades, Joel speaks. He gently thumps the mahogany side of his Epiphone guitar with the palm of his hand. He puts just the right amount of pause between the words, making a story that holds everyone’s attention. “Quite a while ago, back in the summer, as I recall, I gave Ellie this here old guitar that you’ve seen me playing tonight, so she’d have plenty of time to learn how to play. But she’s been lettin’ me play on it some too, which is real nice of her, cause back then we were new in town, and I sure couldn’t afford to buy another one.”

Everyone laughs warmly. She can’t stop grinning. She can’t stop blushing. She looks at her feet, snug in her fancy lady boots.

He continues. “But this new guitar is gonna be a better fit for her. And that’s good, because Ellie has a song she wants to sing for you fine people.” His banter is so easy, his smile so warm. He’s a natural at working a crowd. He should have been a singer, like he always wanted to be. Tonight, he is.

“You’re _making_ me do this,” she says mock-softly, making sure that her words are loud enough for everyone to hear. The crowd laughs again. Joel hugs her, as she turns a shade of red so deep it almost matches her shirt. There is so much love in this room tonight. She is filled with warmth, true, but all the same, she’s very nervous about being in the spotlight. She carefully gathers her loose hair and settles it down her back, out of the way. She wants to ask him to let her out of this, to hear him say that she doesn’t have to go through with it. But she won’t and he doesn’t. It would break his heart. And they’ve all practiced so hard these last few weeks. She is so scared her fingers are trembling on the neck of the guitar. Ibanez, it says on the headstock. Joel has assured her it’s a very good guitar. She wishes she could play half as well as he does. Everyone claps as Ellie readies the beautiful new guitar in her lap and she smiles for the room full of friends. She tries to look at every face before looking back down at her boots again.

“Happy birthday, Ellie,” Maria says, coming around to sit on the armrest beside her, hugging the young woman around the neck. There are only a half-dozen or so high quality guitars in this entire town and now one of them belongs to Ellie. It is a very dear gift from her family and she knows it. She can’t imagine the money they had to spend to secure it, the promises and deals they must have to make to get it into her hands tonight.

_A kid only becomes an adult once in their life. Wish I could remember who said that. Wish I could remember my own name right now._

“Thanks,” Ellie manages to say, her fingers holding onto the guitar for dear life. She has been playing guitar with Joel, Tommy, and Maria in secret for almost two months but she’s suddenly afraid that all the notes, all the chords, all the knowledge they’ve worked so hard to shove into her thick skull will leak out of her in the next couple of minutes. Joel squeezes her shoulder and she smiles at him adoringly.

“Ready?” he asks, low enough that it is only for her ears.

She nods. She can hold onto the music if he’ll just hold onto her.

“We hope you like this song,” Joel says to the crowd standing in front of them, packing the living room. He noodles a few notes experimentally as he warms up. “Not a lot of songs that four people can sing together with everybody gettin’ a turn, but we just had to bring Ellie in on this, since she’s the birthday girl.”

Much as she doesn’t want him to, Joel scoots a few inches away from her so she’ll have enough room to play. She wants to press herself against him, hold his hand, rest her head on his shoulder, but she forces her fingers to find their place on the frets instead. It’s already tuned; Joel took care of that this morning, while she was making hotcakes. She presses down hard on the strings to stop her fingers from shaking. Tommy sits down on the far end of the couch, on the other side of his big brother.

“And it’s one of the few songs we could all agree on,” Maria adds, coming around, sitting down on the armrest of the sofa, next to her husband as he plucks experimentally at his battered old Taylor Big Baby guitar. Joel often teases him that it’s a guitar for beginners, but damn if Tommy can’t get a nice sound out of it all the same.

“Ellie wanted to play a Ramones song,” Tommy adds and everyone laughs in that kind way that doesn’t feel like mocking at all but still brings a warm redness to Ellie’s cheeks.

“I like the Ramones,” Ellie grumbles sweetly, her eyes alternating between her new guitar and her fancy boots. “They’re easy to play.”

“Just three chords,” says Burt from somewhere near the kitchen. At some point, he probably met the Ramones. He was a roadie back in the day, and knew lots of bands. He tells Joel stories about how it was to be on tour with those guys all the time. Some times she has to go down to the horse stables on her days off just to pry Joel away from Burt and his rambling trips down Nostalgia Lane.

More gentle laughter ripples around the crowded room. But it quickly fades into silence as Maria begins to count them in. Ellie swallows hard and takes a deep breath.

_Oh, man. This is it._

Joel and Ellie are on guitar (lead and rhythm, respectively). Joel has one of those cool metal tubes on his pinky finger to play slide, something he promised her he would teach her one of these days. Tommy will be working a passable bass line on his guitar. Maria is the lucky one. She doesn’t have to play anything, just clap two fingers into the palm of her hand and keep them all on the beat. She looks at them. They don’t look nervous at all. They’re smiling and relaxed. Ellie has never sung in front of anyone other than these three people she’s been practicing with. It seems like everyone in the world is in here tonight, and all of them are looking at the four people sitting on the sofa. She feels like a little kid again and tries to draw a little strength from the big man sitting next to her. He smiles at her and she knows she’s ready.

“You good?” he asks with a wink.

“I’m good,” she says, breathes deeply, and squeezes down hard on the strings.

Joel begins to strum the opening chords; she joins him on her new guitar.

The four of them take turns with the lines, harmonizing beautifully on the choruses.

Joel begins: “Well it’s – ”

“All right,” they all sing together.

“Ridin’ around in the breeze,” he sings. “Well it’s – ”

“All right,” they sing.

“If you live the life you please,” he sings. “Well it’s (all right), doin’ the best that you can. Well it’s (all right), as long as you lend a hand.”

Ellie focuses on each and every note. Joel has begun to use the slide on his guitar, playing the lead, ‘taking the song places’, as he likes to say. It’s up to her to keep providing the tempo, to keep what he calls the ‘freight train rhythm’ going smoothly. It’s up to her to give the song its backbone. She can’t let them down.

Tommy is the next to sing. “You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring.”

“At the end of the line,” the other three sing.

“Waitin’ for someone to tell you everything,” Tommy continues.

“At the end of the line,” Ellie, Joel, and Maria sing.

Maria brings her smoky voice to the fore. “Sit around and wonder what tomorrow will bring (at the end of the line). Maybe a diamond ring.”

Maria winks at Ellie, who grins sheepishly.

Joel’s guitar joins hers in the rhythm. She’s glad to have him back, even if it’s just for a few lines. A few quick strums and it’s her turn. Ellie gulps.

Despite her nervousness, she comes in smoothly, her voice strong. She’s surprised by the sound of it.

”Well it's (all right), even if they say you're wrong,” she sings, her voice high and clear, like a bell. “Well it's (all right), sometimes you gotta be strong.”

Joel takes the lead, allowing her to relax for a bit. His baritone fills the room. “Well it's (all right), As long as you got somewhere to lay. Well it's (all right), every day is Judgment Day.”

Joel eases his way back into the slidey lead again, entrusting her to keep the song together with her steady, rhythmic strumming. She smiles nervously and lets her fingers dance across the strings with more confidence than she feels. Her head dips down, her hair begins to slip over her shoulders and hang down the front of her shirt. She does her best to ignore it.

Tommy sings again. “Maybe somewhere down the road a’ways (at the end of the line). You'll think of me, and wonder where I am these days (at the end of the line).”

Maria is next. “Maybe somewhere down the road when somebody plays (at the end of the line) Purple Haze.”

Burt whoops at the name drop of the classic song. Everyone laughs.

Ellie can’t help but notice how the second time around, it is even easier to sing. She smiles her way through the lyrics. The long, loose auburn hair framing her face sways in time with the music.

“Well it's (all right), even when push comes to shove.” Her soprano is very confident now. “Well it's (all right), if you got someone to love.”

Joel comes in right behind her, in perfect time to the rhythm she is making. “Well it's (all right), everything'll work out fine. Well it's (all right), we’re going to the end of the line.”

She smiles, listens to the bendy sound of the slide playing along the strings of Joel’s guitar as he entrusts the rhythm to her one last time. She’s going to bring them all home; that’s what he told her during their many practice sessions.

Tommy. “Don't have to be ashamed of the car I drive (at the end of the Line). I'm just glad to be here, happy to be alive (at the end of the line).”

Maria. “It don't matter cause you're by my side (at the end of the line).” She leans into Tommy, her head next to his, happy. “I'm satisfied.”

Tommy winks at her devilishly.

Ellie’s eyes twinkle as she sings to Joel. “Well it's (all right), even if you're old and gray. Well it's (all right), you still got something to say.”

Joel looks at her. His voice carries over the crowd, but she can sense that his words are just for her. “Well it's (all right), remember to live and let live. Well it's (all right), the best you can do is forgive.”

They all sing the last verse together. “Well it's all right – ”

“All right,” Tommy croons, slightly behind the others, in his best plaintive cowboy hoot much to the enjoyment of the assembled audience.

They continue as a group, “ridin’ around in the breeze. Well it's all right, if you live the life you please.”

The crowd is smiling, ready to applaud, waiting for their cue.

The foursome on the sofa sing together, putting just a little bit of extra effort into the last lines. “Well it's all right, even if the sun don't shine. Well it's all right, we're going to the end of the line.”

Ellie and Joel strum their way to the end of the song. All of them are smiling, a happy family. Together. The last note hangs in the air for half a heartbeat before the wonderful applause rolls across the room and washes over Ellie like a hot bath. She can’t stop smiling. Joel hugs her and whispers words of praise into her ear. He’s so proud of her. She wants this moment to last forever. She’s never loved him more than she does now. The song now finished, she allows her hands to shake.

_Holy shit. I did it. I fucking did it._

“Speaking of the sun not shinin’,” Joel says, when the applause finally begins to fade, “looks like that big snowstorm that’s been sneakin’ up on us all day is just about here.”

He and Tommy stand up and begin to thank the guests, all the while slowly, skillfully corralling the ambling mass of people with their charm, wrangling them up, herding them out. The party is coming to an end. The hour is growing late.

**. . .**

Ellie and Maria gather the coats piled up in the laundry room and help pass them out to their owners. One by one, everyone leaves, hugging Ellie on their way out the door, praising her performance, letting her knew one more time how much they care about her, hoping to beat the snow, wanting to get to their homes before they’re frozen.

Last to leave is Burt, who informs Ellie that he plays bass and if they do this again in the future, he’ll be happy to join in. More importantly, his feelings will be hurt if he’s left out. Ellie promises him he’ll be included. He shuffles out into the cold on toothpick legs. The gray sky is darkening, with only a pinkish smudge on the horizon to indicate that the sun hasn’t forsaken the world entirely during this long, mountain winter.

Tommy and Maria wait in the living room until everyone else is gone. Tommy wraps Ellie up in the kind of bear hug that keeps her toes from touching the carpet. Maria’s hug is much more gentle, but no less loving. She whispers words of encouragement into Ellie’s ear. She and Ellie have been talking a lot lately, about all sorts of things. Joel and Tommy are busy talking about performing again, maybe for the Fourth of July or Halloween or Thanksgiving or something. They miss the quiet exchange between the women. In the last few weeks, Maria has assured Ellie that Joel is ready to move forward with her, even if he doesn’t realize it yet. Ellie hopes Maria, being older and wiser, is right about that. The waiting is killing her. She’s been waiting since she was fourteen, since before she had much in the way of boobs, or much in the way of family. Things are different now. She is different now. She needs Joel to see that.

With a final wave, Ellie sees the married couple out, and closes the door, sad to see them go, but happy that the frigid, late evening air isn’t invading her home anymore. The living room, no longer stuffed full of friends and family, seems suddenly very empty. Ellie is acutely aware of how alone she is with Joel.

_Nobody but us. Just like it used to be on the road. We had the whole world to ourselves almost every night._

“Jesus Christ,” Joel mutters good-naturedly, thumbs hooked in his belt loops, looking around the house. “Just look at this place. What a damn mess.”

Joel’s back is turned. He doesn’t see Ellie taking nervous steps towards him.

_Dear God or Santa or Yoda or whoever is out there tonight flying around in this shitty weather… Please don’t let me screw this up._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “My goodness! When did we get so domestic, Joel?” I’ve been asking myself the same thing! At first, I really missed the open road quality of the early stories. Every chapter a new place to see and new challenges to be faced. Setting an entire volume in one place seemed daunting. But now that I’m a couple of chapters in, I’m finding that I enjoy stacking up the details and putting a lot of effort into creating a single location in which to tell my story. It’s a pleasant surprise.
> 
> One thing I noticed when I played the game was that there were no old people in the world, not even in cutscenes. Likely not too many old people left in the world. I’d like to think that Jackson had at least a few senior citizens set aside as a strategic wisdom stockpile. Professor Swanwick is one of them. Burt is the other.
> 
> And speaking of Burt, big thanks to CatrionaMac for generously agreeing to loan me the old coot from her own fic, Cover Me Up. I needed a throwaway line about how much Ellie loved spending time at the stables and also I needed someone at the party who had strong opinions about music. CatrionaMac’s former rock n’ roll roadie turned stable owner was a perfect fit for an extended cameo, you know? She was nice enough to lend him out. She even wrote up a nice mini-biography for him, giving me a peek into details that were never revealed in her story. I think Burt and Joel would be good buddies. But I imagine Joel doesn’t hang out at the stables when Ellie is working. Joel seems like the sort to give Ellie some privacy and let her have some space. He seemed to have no problem with how independent Sarah was, after all.
> 
> Joel is a man of few words, which makes me stuff a lot of exposition in Ellie’s mouth. Also Dr. Copper, Tommy, Dr Swanwick, and Ellie’s best friend in Jackson, Laurie, who thinks Ellie is the coolest person ever. She looks up to the older Ellie the same way Ellie looked up to Riley. I wish I’d had more time to show the two of them together. Maybe one of these days.
> 
> Lots of music in this one. The song they sing at the end is “End of the Line” by the Traveling Wilburys. Other songs mentioned include Eddie Rabbit’s “Two Dollars in the Jukebox”, John Denver’s “Country Roads”, Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” (which, as Burt notes, is a mish-mash of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” and Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.”), Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway”, and probably one or two more that I’ve forgotten about.
> 
> Also, for the time being at least, Ellie decides not to confront Joel about what happened in Utah. To swipe a phrase, I struggled a long time with this. I had a dozen different ways that conversation was going to go, and almost as many different outcomes once the truth came out. In the end, I decided to go with “keep it buried.” This isn’t going to please everyone, I know. But the more I thought about Ellie and Joel, at least as I understand them, I don’t see how it could reasonably go any other way. Joel makes a decision and then he closes the door on it for good. It took years and year for him and Tommy to reconcile, and that was only because he had no choice but to seek Tommy out. And even after all that, the only reason it didn’t end in a fight was because bandits attacked before fists could fly. Overlooking Jackson as the sun sets, it’s Tommy who chooses to let it go and offer Joel a place in his town. Even after so much time, the only way that wound was going to stay closed was if Tommy chose to leave it alone and put it behind him. No way Joel was going to accept anything but his version of the truth. It’s the only way he can live with the many terrible things he’s done, I suspect.
> 
> Ellie faces the same dilemma that Tommy did. And Ellie, for all her brashness, is more of a peacemaker than Tommy is. In my story, after arriving in Jackson, Ellie suffers deep depression and almost runs away over the guilt of what she suspects might have happened. Ellie, like Tommy, is smart enough to know that if she wants Joel in her life, she’s going to have to leave that wound closed. There’s just no other choice with that man. I know a lot of you wanted the drama of the confrontation (and there is a dramatic confrontation coming before the end of this volume), but I didn’t see any way for them to have it out over what he did in Utah and still stay together – unless there was a conveniently timed bandit attack, I suppose. ;-)
> 
> In my story, Ellie forgives him for what he did, whatever it was. Sometimes, a lie is easier to live with than the truth, and some doors must remain closed if a house is going to remain a home.
> 
> Anyhoo, there won’t be an update next weekend as I have work-related stuff scheduled. But come back the weekend after that for chapter three: “Tonight.” It will be worth the wait, I promise!


	3. Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The birthday party is over. Ellie and Joel are finally alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this was worth the wait.

**“THE HOME AT THE END OF THE ROAD”**

**Chapter 03 – Tonight**

 

Their house is a mess. Two dozen guests milling about for a couple of hours will do that.

Joel stands in the middle of their living room and surveys the post-party wreckage.

“I don’t know who’s cleaning this place up,” Ellie says brightly, coming up behind him, trying to hide any nervous quaver in her voice, “but it’s not gonna be me.”

“That a fact?” Joel asks, turning at the waist to face her, one of his eyebrows raised in challenge.

“Nope,” she says, arms crossed in punky defiance, face scrunched up cutely as she sticks her tongue out at him. “I’m the birthday girl, remember?”

“Birthday’s over, Red,” Joel responds, picking up the guitars from the sofa. “‘Fraid it’s back to the real world now.”

“Awww,” she grumbles sweetly, her eyes following him as he walks to the little closet under the staircase and stores the guitars safely inside. “It’s not even midnight, Joel. Has my carriage already changed back into a pumpkin?”

“If you want to go outside and check, be my guest,” he shrugs, his eyes twinkling. “If you see Prince Charming out there, be sure to tell him not to freeze his nuts off.”

“Har har,” she snarks.

Almost on cue, the wind, which has been blowing steadily for the last few hours, suddenly gusts, making the entire house creak. After a long, noisome minute, it fades in intensity, until there is only a low mournful howling outside.

Ellie looks up at the corners and the ceiling of the large living room. She hugs herself reflexively, glad for the crackling warmth of the big fireplace.

“Man. Listen to that wind.”

Behind the couch and the curtains, the glass groans. She leans over the sofa and peeks out through the frosted window.

“Jeez. It’s really coming down out there.” She wipes at the cold glass with her hand. “I can barely see the Campbell’s house.”

“That storm’s been comin’ our way all day. Reckon it finally made it to town.” He tries to tidy up the living room, at least a little.

The place is a mess. Red plastic cups have come to rest on every flat or nearly flat surface in the room, like a flock of cardinals roosting for winter. The thought makes Ellie smile. The little red birds were a common sight in the trees outside her dorm window in Boston. But they can’t be found this far west. She misses them but keeps that to herself. Maybe Joel would tease, but probably not. More likely, he simply wouldn’t understand, not quite, not in the way she would want him to. She realizes that she took the pretty birds for granted and now they are part of a world she can never return to. It is an illusive, cheerless feeling that she pushes down, a thing to be dealt with later.

She helps to straighten up the house instead. Every quilt and throw pillow is out of place. Used napkins seem to be everywhere but the trashcan. Somebody dropped a fork over by the bookcase, the one only partially filled with books, which strikes Ellie as a tragedy every time she sees it; a wound that must be healed, a hurt that can only be salved by the generous application of reading material. Jackson does not yet have a town library, so she is starting one for herself right here. While straightening the little row of books, she finds two new ones that weren’t there before. Gifts left anonymously by someone – probably Joel. She knows how he is. She picks them up and studies them. The first book has a fancy embossed cover: an open manila folder filled with a disarrayed assortment of papers. Hiding underneath the stack, peeking out from the back of the folder, are what appeared to be a skimpy pair of lacy, sexy, women’s underwear. Ellie’s eyes scan the cover.

         Secret Arraignment by Colleen Jackson.

_Ooh! The same woman who wrote Legally Binding. Smutiest book I ever read. This is definitely not from Joel._

Ellie grins.

_I hope somebody gets tied to the bed in this one too. That book taught me that one woman could have sex with two men at the same time. Educational stuff! Wonder what I’ll learn this time?_

She gives the other book a quick glance.

         Legal Mastermind in the courtroom.

         Submissive plaything in the bedroom.

         The De Novo Affair by Helena Shen.

         A tale of legal wrangling and sensual surrender.

_Oh! Hot damn!_

The cover shows a woman’s legs, wrapped in a knee-length business skirt. Each shapely calf is encased in nylon stockings. She wears black patent leather shoes, teetering on six-inch stiletto heels. Beneath one foot is a single sheet of paper, a handwritten contract of some kind. Ellie flips the book over. On the back cover are more words.

         Author of the sizzling erotic bestsellers,  
         Forbidden Motion and Dangerous Trust.

         A brilliant woman’s journey into her  
         own dark, forbidden sexual awakening.

         Young prodigy Dana Lee has a commanding  
         presence in court that no one can deny,  
         but she yearns for something different behind  
         closed doors. One bold and reckless older  
         man knows what she needs. But first he must  
         convince her to let go and surrender herself to  
         him. Only then can she know true ecstasy.

Beneath the blurb are several quotes from reviewers. Between those blocks of text, in the middle of the page, was what looked to be a pet collar and a long leather leash. The metal tag on the collar bore the name of Dana.

        The most bold and fearless exploration of  
        the dark side of desire you will read all year!

Ellie tries to contain her excited grin. It’s all she can do not to bounce in place.

_Holy shit, this looks even smuttier! Who the hell left these here?_

“What’re those? New books?” Joel asks from across the room, tossing another chuck of wood into the fireplace. It is going to be very cold tonight.

“Nothing!” Ellie answers, cursing herself for how loud and guilty her voice sounds. She haphazardly shoves the pair of books in among other books on the shelf, hiding them in the middle of the pack, like a pair of wild, smutty zebras, safe from the prying eyes of the flannel covered lion that prowls this house. Two days from now, when the storm has reached such an intensity that even the repair crews are told to stay home, Joel, looking for a way to kill time, will discover the two new books wedged clumsily and hastily into the very heart of his carefully corralled herd of cowboy novels. He and Ellie will have a talk about showcasing her dirty books out in the open like this. The talk will be awkward.

“Hey! C’mere!” she says, dashing across the room to the recliner. Andy Givener had been sitting there most of the evening. The quilt he used to keep his one and a half legs warm is all wadded up in the seat, partially pushed down into the cushions. “Here! Help me fold this quilt,” she says.

Don’t go anywhere near that bookshelf, she does not say.

Together the two of them neatly fold the old quilt in half and then in half again. She drapes it over the back of the recliner. This is Joel’s official reading chair. On cold evenings, he likes to kick back here and lose himself in the world of lonesome trails and rolling tumbleweeds and wily desperados and other things that Ellie desperately wants to like so she can share that world with him, but good lord it is some boring, laconic, keep all your emotions buttoned up and keep your six gun holster tied down and never get too attached to a horse or a woman boring old man kind of stuff.

_Why can’t you read dirty legal dramas like I do?_

She straightens the quilt, smoothing it with her hands.

“Know what this reminds me of?” she asks, her innocent tone betrayed by a sly smile.

“A quilt?” he responds dryly, picking up a few dropped napkins from the carpet.

“That recliner in the vacation cabin by the lake. The big, comfy one. Remember?”

“I do,” he says, making eye contact briefly before her nerve breaks and she looks away. “Wish we had a real La-Z-Boy like that one was, Red. But this one here gets the job done.”

“That was one heck of a magic chair,” she says, pivoting slowly to face him, wearing an expression of loving warmth and poorly hidden teenage horniness on her face.

“It surely was,” he says, studying her briefly. “That was a nice break. A good couple of days of rest on a rough trail.”

“It wasn’t all bad,” she says, walking towards him slowly in her snug black jeans and fancy boots. “Remember the Motel 6? Or the Tamarack House? How about that little shack by the pond?”

There had been other good places along the way too. The free city of Burlington. The Dixie Star Drive-In. The Big Darby Nature Preserve. Those places had made for good rest stops too, but no kissing. No touching. No wild nakedness. She purposefully doesn’t mention them. They aren’t going to help make her case.

“Oughta find my way back to that little shack one of these days,” he says, his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans as she nonchalantly orbits nearer to him. “Bet a fella could get some real good huntin’ done down there.”

“We could go together,” she says hopefully, a little impishly.

_Come on, dude. Take the bait. TakeTheBaitTakeTheBaitTakeTheBait!_

“We just might do tha-“ he begins.

The lights flicker once. Then a second time. A moment later, for one long second, the living room is plunged into darkness broken only by the long orange-red triangle of light stretching out from the fireplace. Then the electric lamps surge back to life, shining steadily once more.

“Jeez,” Ellie mutters. “What if the power goes out? Wouldn’t be the first time a line blew down. Tommy said that last winter they lost power for three or four days before they could find the line that’d fallen and put it back up again.”

“We’ll be alright if it does. We’re stocked up on food now. Desserts, anyway,” he says, ambling across the room towards the kitchen, which is piled high with treats and snacks left by the guests. “And if we get hungry for somethin’ other than cake or cookies, I can go out to the smokehouse and bring one of the hams in.”

“Oh, your answer to every big problem is to smoke some meat,” she snickers, following behind him.

“There ain’t a problem on earth that a big slab of steak won’t fix, darlin’,” he chuckles and makes his way into the kitchen to try and impose some order on the place.

She enters the room hot on his heels. She takes a cartoonishly long inhalation, stretching the front of her shirt tight across her breasts as she does so – a sight he does not fail to notice. “Mmm. Damn it smells _so good_ in here, dude.”

“Sure does,” he says. “And we’d better get this stuff sorted and put away. Get the cold stuff in the fridge. If the power goes out again, we don’t need any of this good food goin’ bad if we can prevent it.”

“True. This is our big chance to eat food cooked by people who can actually cook. People not us, I mean,” she grins, and begins to sort through the piled-up mess which sprawls across every countertop in the place, carefully inspecting the dig site, like the archaeologists in her old National Geographic magazines, separating covered dishes from dirty plates, treasure from trash.

Joel lifts up one corner of a paper towel covering a plate of cookies. He sniffs appreciatively. “Mmm. Iced oatmeal cookies. I think Mrs. Engdahl brought these.”

“That’s mine,” Ellie says.

“Deviled eggs,” he says, holding up a rectangular plastic container, lifting the plastic lid by the corner.

“Also mine.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Joel grins, leaning in to the open refrigerator, trying to arrange the items on the shelves, trying to free up just a little more space, “somebody left a box of sausage patties and cheese slices in here. Already cooked!”

“That’s especially mine. And there’s three pounds of bacon in there too, from your brother and your sister-in-law. Do I even have to tell you that’s mine?”

She hears glass clinking, metal rattling, as Joel shoves things aside to find the bacon. When he locates it, he sniffs it heartily.

“Damn, that smells good, Ellie.”

She giggles as she stacks dishes in the sink. “Hey! No sniffing! The smell is mine too.”

His voice carries to her from inside the cold depths of the fridge, echoing slightly. “Gonna have me a slice of this. Maybe tear a piece off one of the little strips.”

“Whoa! Down boy! No! Don’t touch. Don’t even look at it! Ooh! New rule: You’re not allowed to look at Ellie’s bacon,” she calls back over her shoulder to him from her place at the sink.

But it is too late. Joel emerges from the deepest parts of the fridge with half a strip of crisp bacon sticking out from his mouth. He chews it with great gusto, shortening it by slow inches, groaning with delight, and very smugly bumps the door closed with his ass.

_He’s in a good mood. He’s almost… playful._

“Clearly I need my own fridge,” she sighs, feigning disappointment, stacking dirty plates to be washed tomorrow. “One with a big padlock on it. And a sign that says ‘No Joels Allowed’.”

“Zip it,” he says, carefully arranging plastic bowls of cookies and other baked treats on top of the fridge, his big fingers slick with bacon grease, his remorseless heart utterly free of guilt. “We might lose power. I’m just doin’ my part to help you eat that bacon before it goes bad.”

“I think I could handle that on my -“ she begins, but stops when she spies a very fancy, small, square ceramic dish, maroon, decorated with etched-in flowers and topped with a clear glass lid. Condensation has steamed up the inside of the glass.

“What’s this?” she mumbles to herself.

She lifts the lid up by the little knob at the center. The delicious smell of strawberries waft up to her. She recognizes the dessert inside.

“Whatcha got there?” Joel asks, licking the last lingering traces of stolen bacon from his lips.

“Strawberry crumble,” Ellie answers quietly, slightly stunned by the discovery.

_Strawberry._

_Crumble._

The best dessert in Jackson. Ellie has eaten it only once, at Maria’s baby shower. A single portion. More like half a portion. And she’d let her brand new friend Laurie have a bite of it, just because there wasn’t enough to go around and someone with breasts as amazing as Laurie’s shouldn’t be allowed to miss out on a treat so sinfully sumptuous. Shelly Hammond doesn’t even have it on the menu at her restaurant. Nobody has it. Anywhere. Ellie has asked around. She was like a bloodhound at the fall festival, trying to sniff up even a single crumb of it. It can’t be found. Strawberries are the rarest of treats. Wild strawberries are scarce in the forests around Jackson. Most of the ones that find their way into town come from the Indians over the mountain at Wind River, who trade a few baskets of them every now and then.

“Is that what that is? I was wonderin’ about that,” Joel says, leaning in over her shoulder to get a look. “Olivia Crowe dropped that off just before everybody showed up. Said it was from her and Ralph.”

_The smell… So good._

Joel continues. Ellie tries to focus. His words are far away. “Said she was lookin’ after her ailin’ sister, so she couldn’t stay. But she wishes you a happy birthday.”

_Can’t think…_

“She said now that you’re sixteen, Ralph wants you to drop by the bank. Talk to you. Probably somethin’ about openin’ a savings account. Good idea, if you ask me.”

_Turn your head, Joel. Don’t look. I’m going to eat all of this. I’m going to shove my whole face into this little dish and inhale it. Don’t look. I don’t want you to see me debase myself like this._

She whispers, “I have to go tell Olivia thank you, Joel.”

“I reckon that’d be the neighborly thing to do. Tomorrow mornin’, on your way to work, yeah?”

“I have to do it right now,” she says solemnly. “Before I eat all of this and die from a sugar coma.”

“The whole thing, huh?” he deadpans.

“Yes.”

“Right now, you said?” he asks in the same dry tone.

“Yes,” she says, accepting her grim fate. She puts the dessert down and places the lid on the dish. “I must. Before the diabetes gets me.”

“The Crowes live all the way on the other side of town,” Joel says, “right next door to Tommy and Maria, I believe.”

“So far to go,” she says weakly, knowing it will end badly for her. The wind is howling at the kitchen window. She closes her eyes and sighs deeply, direly, clearly doomed to die, but accepting of it. “Surely God has it in for me. Just like I always knew He did.” She throws the back of her hand up to her forehead, overcome with melodrama. “Oh! Why is He such a butthead?”

“You set out in this snow storm,” Joel faux-cautions, smiling, close behind her, his voice a deep rumble in her ear, “and you’ll turn into a popscicle. Sure gonna miss you when you’re gone, Red.”

She turns in place, throws her arms around him with a melodramatic flourish, hugs him tightly.

“I know,” she says, her face pressed into his big, flannel-covered chest. “Goodbye, Joel. I’ve always loved you. Take care of the dog for me.”

He chuckles. Tremors ripple through the broad expanse of his hard, flannel-sheathed muscles, pleasing her in unspeakable ways. “We don’t have a dog, Peaches.”

She clutches at him, turns her head so she can rest, cheek to flannel, against him. Her eyes stay closed. If she makes eye contact with him, she’ll laugh and her big, dramatic scene will be ruined. “Get a dog and take care of him for me. Name him Peaches, so you’ll never forget me.”

He slips his arms around her. She smiles. Her theatrics have paid off.

_And the Oscar goes to Ellie Williams._

_I’d like to thank the Academy and all the little people who made this moment possible._

She sighs happily, her eyes closed. He smoothes her hair with his hand, parting it, framing her face.

“You are one weird young woman,” he murmurs. “You know that?”

“I do,” she grins, still hugging him, still being hugged by him. All is right with the world now. “When spring comes, shovel me out of the ice and bury me in the herb garden. Maybe once I’m fertilizer, those damn horsemint plants will finally grow.” She looks up at him. “So don’t bury me too deep, okay?”

“I promise you I’ll bury you in the shallowest grave Jackson’s ever seen.”

“Mmmm. You’re too good to me, Joel.”

“Yes, I surely am.”

They stand there, embraced, as the wind makes the kitchen window creak and moan. Ellie sighs happily. Joel makes a reassuring sound.

“You gonna help me finish straightenin’ this place up?” Joel asks at some length, his voice gentle and low. “Or you just gonna stay hugged up on me?”

Ellie buries her face into his chest and makes a sweet, evasive, non-answer of a sound, something half-giggle and half grunt. She does not let him go.

**. . .**

   
It will be bedtime soon. The house is as clean as it’s going to get tonight. No more chores until tomorrow, at the earliest. A big bag of trash waits by the backdoor, ready to go out in the morning, assuming snowdrifts aren’t blocking the door by then.

They sit on the couch together. It has been a long day. His arm rests across her shoulders. She is tucked in close to him, resting her cheek against his nicest shirt, black with accents of gray and white. Like her maroon satin one, it is a garment he only wears on special occasions. The fireplace crackles and sizzles. The room is warm, but she thinks about pulling the patchwork blanket down from the back of the couch.

_Would that be too cozy? Or just cozy enough? I’m a little of out of practice at this snuggling stuff._

“Drifts’re almost up the bottom of the window,” he says, one finger rising up lazily in the general direction of the big windows behind the other couch, across the living room.

“Unnf,” she grouses. They’ll have to shovel their way out of the house tomorrow. She’ll have to wake up an hour early just to have enough time to trudge her way to the stables through hip deep snow. “Bleh,” she adds for good measure. “Snow looks so pretty, but only if you don’t have to be out in it.”

He grunts in the affirmative and settles deeper into the sofa.

“All of October I waited and waited for it to snow,” she murmurs. “And now I don’t ever want it to snow again.”

“Better than last winter,” he says in a quiet voice as she shifts and stretches against him. “I hope I never have to spend that many weeks sleepin’ on a hide-a-bed. My back still ain’t forgiven me for that.”

“Yeah. But c’mon, man… listen to that sound.” The violent, murderous world outside their safe little house claws at every home in Jackson, battering, howling, gusting, ripping at hibernating trees and dancing power lines alike, blanketing everything in thick, white piles. The very sound itself is spooky and freezing. She shivers. “Makes you want to get under the covers and stay there, doesn’t it?”

“It surely does.”

A barely detectable tremor goes through her. Excitement. Nervousness. She presses herself against him, pulling herself closer to him with her small hands. He doesn’t give any hint of getting up, so she forces herself to be patient and wait a little longer. She fills the time the only way she knows how.

“Man,” she begins, pausing only briefly to yawn. “What a day. Never had so many hugs in my life.”

“Yeah, well, you had a lot of friends here tonight. Hugs are just how they say they love you.”

She’s already cuddled up against him, but she squeezes him for good measure. He squeezes her back.

_That counts as a hug._

“Saw you all hugged up on Dan a little while ago,” he says, cautiously, exploring the issue while trying his Texan best to sound unconcerned.

“Dude bought me a shotgun,” Ellie replies, her voice all smiles. “Man buys you a gun, he gets a hug. If that’s not a law, it ought to be.”

Joel chuckles softly and says nothing, quietly mollified and relieved. It will only occur to Ellie much later to wonder if he was jealous.

Ellie suddenly volunteers, “Oh, hey! Did you know Dan’s dad’s name was Gun?”

“Sure did,” Joel says.

“Gun Choi. How cool is that?” Ellie continues on without pause. She has information to share. “He used to be the town doctor here. But he died. Laurie said he was a doctor in Boston.”

“He was,” Joel nods. “Me and Tess smuggled him out of the city. And as I recall, I’m fairly sure it was through the same tunnel we used with you.”

Ellie sits up, excited. She keeps one hand on his stomach, not wanting to risk breaking contact entirely. She knows how Joel is. Give him an opportunity to get away, and he will. “No shit? You’re kidding!”

“Nope,” Joel says, stretching his back just a little, but not showing any sign of running off (Ellie keeps her hand in place, just in case). “He was a licensed doctor, so FEDRA kept him under lock and key. I can’t tell you what a pain in the ass it was gettin’ him out of that place. Tess used just about everybody workin’ for her to pull it off. She even had to bring in a couple of outsiders. She didn’t normally like to use freelancers, but she didn’t have much choice. Lots of distractions needed. Forged documents. People pretendin’ to be maintenance workers, orderlies, one guy had to fake appendicitis. That deal was all kinds of complicated, that’s for sure. Real ‘Mission: Impossible’ job.”

Ellie marvels at him, a man still full of so many exciting mysteries.

_Mission impossible? That sounds cool, whatever it is._

“You broke somebody out of the FEDRA building? That’s amazing. My friend was in there once. The way she described it, that place was, like, half spaceship and half fortress.”

“Not the FEDRA building,” he admits. “That place was in the middle of the Military Quarters Area. Nobody, and I mean _nobody_ , could’ve got in and out of there. Dr. Choi was in the big hospital in Area 3. Tess ran her smugglin’ operation out of Area 4, just south of one of the main A3 checkpoints. See, nobody had the run of Area 3 but the army, since it was right across from the Military Quarters Area. Tess, Robert, Donovan, none of ‘em would risk tryin’ settin’ up shop or doin’ any kind of business inside Area 3. So damn many soldiers runnin’ aroun-” Joel pauses and looks at the girl gazing up at him, hanging on his every word. “You sure you want me to talk your ear off with one of my old war stories?”

She rolls her eyes at the dumbest question ever asked. “Duh.”

Joel chuckles. “Well… Like I said, it was a helluva hard job to plan. Lucky for me and everyone involved, Tess did all the plannin’.”

Ellie giggles adoringly.

“Her plans were usually real simple. Simple is best. Complicated plans have too many movin’ parts that can go wrong. But this one wasn’t. I woulda bet my last dollar that it was gonna go off the rails. But it worked. Once they figured out that Choi wasn’t in his room, sirens started goin’ off all over the city. You woulda thought we’d kidnapped the president or somethin’. Couple of real close calls, let me tell you, kiddo. Once we got outside of the walls, we had to lay low for three days. Spent most of it inside this collapsed drainage tunnel. Layin’ on our bellies, muddy water up to our chins.”

“You couldn’t find someplace better? What about Bill’s town? Or that office building we went through? Or the museum? Anything had to be better than laying in butt water.”

“Couldn’t get to any of those places. The army had dogs huntin’ for us outside the wall. Trackin’ our scent. We had to hide in the water, way back at the end of the drain tunnel so the dogs couldn’t smell us.”

“Jeez.”

“We were all sick as hell after a few days of it. Bronchitis. Choi was the sickest of all. He wasn’t exactly a young man, you know? To be honest, I was kind of surprised when Maria told me that he survived the trip out here. The way he was hackin’ and coughin’ when we got him to her group, I figured pneumonia woulda got him before he crossed the Mississippi.”

“Sheesh.”

“Got paid real good for that job. Dangerous as it was, we sure weren’t gonna do it for cheap. Tess took just about all the rations tickets they had left. Not that they were gonna have any need of them outside the QZ. Course, we spent a lot of that haul on antibiotics and medicine for ourselves.” He shrugs. “That’s how it goes sometimes.”

“Did… did you see Tommy? When you took Dr. Choi to the group?”

“From a distance,” Joel sighs. “I hung back by the truck – we’d had to borrow it from Bill, Tess’s last truck had been all shot up. I sorta stayed just down the street. Keepin’ an eye out for bandits, or soldiers, or infected. Tess made the hand-off and collected the payment.”

“You didn’t even want to say goodbye to Tommy?”

“Somebody had to watch the truck,” Joel says with a carefully neutral shrug. When he sees the hurt inching across Ellie’s face, he adds, “Tommy and me had said our goodbyes a few weeks before.”

“‘I don’t ever want to see your goddamn face again’,” Ellie says, remembering Joel’s words from before.

“Somethin’ like that, yeah,” Joel says flatly. Dredging up the past never goes well. He wonders why the girl doesn’t understand that as well as he does. “No point in hashin’ that shit out with him again. The bruises from the last time were finally gone. Plus I was sick as a dog. The bronchitis, you know. Better to just let him go. No strings attached.”

Ellie hugs him again. She’s glad he and Tommy are on good terms again, like brothers should be. She tells him so.

“All that was a long time ago,” he says into the top of her head, where his chin rests. “Things are a lot better between us now.”

“I know,” she whispers. “And I’m glad.”

“Me too.”

“Tommy’s been a big help to us,” she adds.

”That’s a fact. Baby brother’s grown up some since Boston. He’s a regular pillar of the community in these parts. Shit, you shoulda seen how much the Indians like him when we went to Fort Washakie.”

“I wanted to go,” she reminds him rather tartly, poking his ribs with a slender finger. “I practically begged. But you said no.”

“Maria said no,” he clarified. “You were too young then. You can go on the next trip.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Parker and I get along pretty good, I think. I’ll see if I can pull some strings with him and get you on the list. And it pays almost ten bucks.”

“Who pays it? Maria?”

“The town. Comes from all the taxes we pay. You’ll be payin’ taxes now too. So you might want to think about talkin’ to Ralph down at the bank. You got grown up responsibilities now, kiddo. Serious stuff, no joke.”

“I will,” she says, on the one hand thrilled to finally be an adult, on the other hand already a little melancholy that her childhood is now over. Forever. Officially. “How did you guys manage to pay for all this? This party, I mean. The guitar, the gun, all of it? We’re not in the hole are we? Isn’t that how you say it? ‘In the hole’?”

Joel chuckles. The girl has a good memory and lord knows he’s complained about money since they settled in here. Starting a home from scratch isn’t cheap, no matter where you are. He had to take out a small loan from Ralph’s bank, not too much, just twenty dollars. He explains that to her and she seems concerned. She’s taking her cues from him, like always. He hugs her.

He didn’t answer her. She presses the issue. “Seriously. Are we gonna be okay, Joel?”

“Sure. Payments are reasonable. But all the same, I gotta get that paid off quick. Don’t like bein’ in debt.”

“I’ll help you with it, Joel,” she says earnestly. Ellie is a helper. She always has been.

“Nah. You go on and save your money for yourself. I’ll worry about the bills.”

“No way. I’m an adult now. You just said so. And this is my house too.”

“Ellie, I don’t mind. It’s my job to pay the bills and keep the lights on.”

“I’m buying all the groceries from now on,” she says suddenly, picking an expense at random. Her voice is friendly enough, but her tone indicates this is a hill she will die on.

“Ellie –“ he begins with a weary tone.

But Ellie is having none of it. She makes her case. “Burt gave me a raise not too long ago. And I do most of the shopping anyway. I’m the one with more free time. You’re always fixing a roof, or building a barn, or working down at the dam, or on patrol or whatever. Heck, going to the general store gives me something to do. I’ve got a lot of free time, dude.”

Joel snorts with good humor. “Free time? You ain’t gonna have much of that anymore. You’ll be up in a guard tower now, girl. And sooner or later, you’ll pull lookout duty at the dam too. Or the radio tower. Or any one of a dozen spots. Now that you’re all grown up, most of your free time is about to dry up, I’m sad to tell you.”

“Goodness,” she mutters, pretending to be outfoxed, stroking her chin with judicious thoughtfulness. “Taxes _and_ responsibilities, you say? Hmmm. It would appear that being an adult sucks a tremendous amount of butt. Quite so. Yes. Indubitably.”

Joel chuckles. “Probably should have warned you about it, Peaches.”

She smiles up at him. “This is your fault. I’m blaming you. You should’ve told them I was younger when we got here. Like seven or eight. I’m short. They might have bought it.”

“Not that it’ll change anything, but go right ahead and blame me if it’ll make you feel better,” he winks, grinning just a little, crookedly.

“Oh I’m gonna, believe me,” she laughs. “And I’m buying the groceries too. I’m pulling my weight around here, dude. Don’t even try to stop me.”

Joel chuckles and settles into the couch cushions just a little more deeply. “Well… the haul from your birthday party ought to feed us for a week or more, at least. So you’re off to a good start, I reckon.”

Her voice is warm and gentle when she cuddles up next to him again. “I’m not joking, okay? This is our home, Joel. We’re in this together, right? So let me help. I’m not a kid anymore…”

Her words are laced with erotic undertones. She leans in, bringing her face close to his as she finishes the sentence.

“I want to be an adult now… I’m ready.”

Her heart is in her throat. Everything she expects to happen plays through her mind. In the weeks leading up to tonight and her carefully planned seduction of him, she’s imagined this moment unfolding a dozen different ways:

Joel flustered and goofy, caught off guard by her sexy, womanly advances. Clumsy, dropping things, clearing his throat, not sure how to handled this suddenly aggressive and confident Ellie.

Joel prudish and stuck in the old ways, backing up, trying to put distance between him and the wanton girl turned woman. She chases him around the room, finally cornering him, tackling him, leaving him no choice except to surrender to lust.

Joel the porn star who wordlessly rips off her clothing and takes her right there on the carpet, which is of course pillow-soft and warm and clean despite the party and all the boot marks and crumbs of food and did somebody spill their drink over there and not say anything?

Joel the sensitive lover, who asks her if she’s really sure that she’s willing to take the next step with him and only after hearing her say it does he gently carries her upstairs to bed and cover her with kisses and tender touches with big hands that are baby soft and not rough and calloused at all before finally laying back and letting her get on top so she can get it in just the way she needs it for as long as she needs it because a truly sensitive man never comes before his woman and he’s always willing to wait.

Joel the rough cowboy who doesn’t even let her finish the sentence, pulling her hair, bending her head back, kissing her hard and deep and super manly until her clothes just sort of fall off all by themselves and then putting her on all fours and taking her from behind doggy style, rough and sweaty, yanking her hair, slapping her ass, getting all kinds of animal sounds out of her, making her come hard, over and over, before shooting his big Texan load inside her, filling her pussy with all the jizz his big balls can make, because real men don’t pull out or ever worry about making babies because that sort of silliness is for the womenfolk and lord knows they don’t mind too much either because every cowgirl loves being rode hard and put up wet from time to time.

Joel the man who doesn’t mind sharing his best girl with his brother, and so when Tommy magically appears from the kitchen, the two of them take her by the hands and together they lead her up the bedroom and she loses her virginity to both of them in a night of passion so amazing that it can only be topped by waking up the next morning to find the brothers have started another round of passionate love-making without her, which is her fault really, she shouldn’t have slept in, so all she can do is watch sweaty, grunty, muscley, flexy, thrusty, ball-bouncy and completely over the top man on man fucking that is absolutely never going to happen but that doesn’t stop her from fantasizing about it all the time and is it too much for a girl to hope to be the lucky piece of meat in a burly Miller sandwich and she’s certain Joel would really like getting the world’s most perfect double blowjob from her and Tommy if he’d just give it a chance.

None of those Joels are here tonight. There is only one Joel. The real Joel.

“I’m ready,” she repeats, sincerely, looking up at him, trying her best to look grown up, adulting harder than she has ever adulted before. She reaches up, places her hand on his shoulder. She nods, giving a definitive answer to an unspoken question.

_I’m ready._

He looks at her with dark, shadowed eyes, sizing her up, taking in all of her curves, smiling faintly at one corner of his mouth. The butterflies in her stomach dart about, soaring, threatening to lift her off the ground. Their eyes meet. His hand slips down from her shoulder, dances along her back, comes to rest on the swell of her denim-snugged hip, that spot where it begins to become the curve of her ass. Her breath catches in her throat. She swallows softly. Green eyes glimmer above freckled cheeks. Full, soft lips part, revealing white teeth and a nervous smile.

“Yeah. I reckon you are ready, Ellie,” he drawls in a voice so deep and sexy that Ellie is sure her panties have disintegrated.

They leave any remaining clean up duties for tomorrow.

He stands, reaches out a hand to help her up. She takes it, holds it tightly, as he leads her across the living room. Hand in hand, she walks up the stairs with him.

The door to his bedroom is open. Across the short hall and a bit further down, her bedroom door is open too. She smiles slyly, mostly to herself. Her cute little stuffed giraffe will be sleeping alone tonight; she’s certain of it.

Her mind is racing. She’s trying to remember everything Maria has told her. She digs deep into her memories and sorts through every eavesdropped conversation Riley and Cherry ever had about boys. There is a world of difference between the two sources of information. She decides to believe Maria. That woman has a baby. Clearly she knows how sex works.

_Not that I want to get pregnant from my first time. And some of the girls at the dorm said you couldn’t. Not from the first time. But I’m pretty sure you can. Right? Jeez, I hope not. But it that happens, I guess I’ll –_

“I’ll get the room warmed up,” he says standing in the doorway to his bedroom.

“Okay. I’m gonna pee,” she says and instantly wishes she hadn’t.

_Fucksticks! Don’t say that out loud! Be cool, Ellie! Be cool!_

Joel nods as though she has said something perfectly sensible. And maybe she has. She doesn’t know. She nods back, her serious face on. “Thanks,” she says, again wishing that she hadn’t.

_Why can’t I just shut up?_

Joel covers the short distance between them in two easy steps. She looks up at him, very much in love.

“It’s alright to be nervous,” he says with a gentle smile, one hand coming up to touch her cheek. “A girl only gets one first time.”

“I know,” she smiles, nods, relaxing an imperceptibly miniscule amount.

She suddenly plunges in, diving unexpectedly into the deep end of a kiss. Her arms are around his neck. She doesn’t remember putting them there. He doesn’t push her away. He draws her in close with his hands. She is on her tiptoes. She wants him to lift her up. She wants to soar. She makes a soft sound of pure desire which is embarrassing, but manageably so. He pulls in her in just a little tighter. She can feel herself melting into a limpid pool of maroon satin and black denim. She remembers their first kiss, in the lengthening shade of an old UPS truck: their first rest stop on this side of the Mississippi.

Snow falls outside. The little town is blanketed beneath it. Glaciers pass by. Wooly mammoths trundle along over an endless field of white that had once been Jackson. A new ice age buries the world while they kiss. She doesn’t care. It’s just the two of them now, all alone together, exactly as it should be.

Joel’s tongue is warm in her mouth. She moans again, is embarrassed again. Her feet begin to protest. Being up on your toes for this long isn’t easy. She wants him to wrap his arms around her butt and hoist her up to him. She remembers the silly red high heels she found in the luggage at the Motel 6 ages and miles ago. Maybe that’s why women wore shoes like that once upon a time? For kissing tall men? That would make sense. She can’t think of any other reason to walk around in such impractical things. She wishes she had those shoes right now.

Joel pulls away with obvious reluctance. Her lips chase his mouth for a scant second. She keeps her eyes closed longer than she probably should. When she opens them, she is still in his arms, though no longer arched up on the balls of her feet. His arms feel so good around her. He is looking at her the way a wolf looks at a bunny. Her heart races. She wants to kiss him again. She has missed kissing so very much.

“Probably ought to move this to the bedroom, yeah?” he asks, his words thicker and slower than usual.

She nods.

“Gotta pee first,” she says, wishing once again that she would stop saying that out loud.

Maria told her that it’s a good idea to pee before sex. And after too. Less risk of urinary tract infections that way. It sounds dumb, to be honest. The woman in Ellie’s smutty book never worries about that. But that’s fiction. And Maria is a real person. A real person who has had sex for real.

_Clearly she would know about this stuff._

“Alright,” Joel nods sagely, as though this is not a strange thing for her to say. He’s a real person too. A real man who knows about sex and stuff.

He lets her slip free from his arms and she wishes he hadn’t. Her urinary tract is dumb and spoils all the fun. Boys don’t worry about stuff like that. Boys can pee standing up too. So much of life is just unfair.

“Be right back,” she says, taking a slow step back, holding onto both of his hands with hers.

_Let go, dummy. Let go or he’s gonna think you’re trying to drag him in there with you._

She releases his hands, grinning goofily, eyes shining, still walking backwards.

“Don’t look,” she giggles, wishing as hard as she can that she could sound just a little bit like the grownup she’s supposed to be now. She turns quickly, pivoting around and dashing for the bathroom. She closes the door a little too fast, a little too loud.

_Get your shit together, Ellie! If you keep acting like a little kid, he’s gonna start thinking you’re too young for this stuff, just like he always did before._

_Don’t screw this up!_

_Be a grown up, for fuck’s sake!_

_I’m trying, Bad Ellie. I’m trying as hard as I can._

_Try harder!_

She unfastens her jeans and pushes them down to her ankles, along with her underwear, all twisted and bunched up around the tops of her fancy lady boots.

_Slow down!_

Her butt hits the cold toilet seat and she gasps.

_Fuck! FuckfuckfuckFUCK!_

A quiet minute of uncomfortably cold butt cheeks goes by. Nothing happens.

_Oh come on! Do NOT do this to me, bladder!_

She sits there for a moment. Then a longer moment. She clamps her mouth shut, pressing her lips together tightly against her teeth until they begin to lose color. She tries to feel her kidneys, hiding somewhere inside her. She wants to will them into action.

_Pee._

_Pee._

_C’mon! PEE!_

Nothing.

She leans forward just a little, tries to use the Force. She grimaces.

_Midichlorians are so stupid. Gah! Tommy was right. The prequels were so disappoini-_

_Oh! There it is. Finally! Thank God!_

She relaxes, lets it happen, hopes that Maria was telling her the truth about this stuff and not just playing an elaborate prank on her.

_I swear to God, if I tell her I took her ‘pee before sex’ advice and she laughs because I fell for it, I’m gonna be so pissed off._

Ellie snickers softly at the pun.

_Pissed off. Hee hee._

She dabs at herself with a wad of toilet paper. The stuff is becoming more expensive as the long winter wears on and Andy’s scavenged supply of packaged, soft rolls is beginning to run low. Jackson makes no supply runs once the snow starts to fall. It’s too dangerous a time to be outside the safety of the walls. She grimaces again, remembering her time on the road, thinking back to old newspapers and rough, gas station paper towels. She shakes her head. Andy Givener can go right ahead and clean out her piggy bank. There is no fucking way she’s going without quality toilet paper ever again.

She tosses the bit of paper into the little can by the sink and looks down at her underwear, bunched up around her ankles.

_Fuck, I wish I’d worn sexy underwear. But no, I’m stuck with the dumb, striped ones – the last ones in the underwear drawer. God, I shouldn’t have waited so long to do laundry. Riley was right. The day has finally come where putting off the stupid laundry has bitten me on the ass just like she predicted it would._

She remains seated on a toilet seat that is no longer quite as cold as it was but still not warm enough to be comfortable, staring at her underwear and mulling her options.

_Is there time to change? Break out those skimpy, lacey, purple ones I bought way back when? They’re still hiding in my room._

_Do I have time?_

_Maybe… No. I guess not._

She stands, frustrated at herself. She wants to throw up her hands. She wants to go back in time and kick Bad Ellie in the butt for being so lazy about the laundry. But she only exhales in annoyance and starts to tug at her tragically unsexy but functional underwear.

Halfway up, she pauses.

_Should I wash up? Down there?_

_Maybe? I don’t know._

_Do I need to?_

_Shit. I’m not sure._

_I showered before the party, but…_

“Gah!” she exclaims in a low voice, muttering darkly, “Better safe than sorry.”

Warm water. Damp washcloth. Cleaning up downtown. She finds no bits of toilet paper. Not even a hint of unwelcome funk. All is well.

“Damn it,” she grumbles, rinsing the washcloth, wringing it out, draping it on the rim of the laundry basket in the corner. “He’s gonna wonder what’s taking me so long. I’ve been in here all fucking night.”

“‘You okay in there, lil’ buckaroo? Didn’ fall in, didya?’” she mutters quietly in the deepest Texas drawl a sixteen year old woman can manage.

“I’m fine, Joel,” she answers herself in a hushed, high falsetto, “Just making sure I’ve got that ‘new car’ smell.”

She grumps under her breath, “Don’t even know what a new car smells like. But the way these old guys talk about it, it better smell like clean twat.”

She towels herself dry, pulls up her pants, sighs again, a little despondently.

_Stupid blue and white stripes. Why didn’t I save the black ones for tonight?_

“Dumb,” she mutters.

She sighs.

She fills the plastic tumbler almost to the top with cold tap water and chugs it. Assuming Maria isn’t playing some kind of elaborate prank, she’ll be back in here again after the sex is done. Her kidneys will need something to work with.

She puts the empty plastic cup down by the sink. She notices her hand is shaking.

_Calm down, Ellie._

She looks at herself in the mirror. The girl in the glass gives her a little pre-sex pep talk

“You got this,” the reflected image tells her.

Ellie nods, though she feels a little sick to her stomach.

“And you’re not gonna puke,” the girl in the mirror scolds. “You are gonna go in there and lose your virginity like a boss. And bosses don’t get nervous and puke. Not ever. Never even once. Bosses lay back and get fucked like it’s no big deal and just something they do it all the time, right?”

“Right,” Ellie nods, trying hard to accept the advice.

She steps back from the mirror and gives herself a quick check. She brushes off a few sugar cookie crumbs from the front of her blouse.

She lightly preens. She strikes a sexy pose. She fixes the part in her hair. She checks her teeth – this is not the time for bits of sausage or cookies in her smile. She sniffs her armpits. She checks her nose for boogers – if ever there was a wrong time for an unfortunately timed nose goblin to show up, it’s tonight!

“Okay,” she says, bowing her head, clutching at the edge of the little countertop. “Okay. Okayokayokay… Here we go.”

She opens the door, and steps out into the hallway, fully expecting to see Joel leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom, smirking and ready with a joke about sending an expedition out to find her.

But he isn’t there. His bedroom door is closed.

_I swear to God, if he’s playing a joke… if he’s locked the door…_

On the outside, she holds it together, but inside her emotions are ping-ponging wildly. On the verge of getting either pointlessly angry or needlessly scared, she suddenly turns. There are heavy footsteps below.

Joel is coming up the stairs, chewing a bit of bacon, carrying the extra space heater. Normally it would be in the upstairs bathroom, but he’d moved it downstairs earlier in the day, to the other bathroom so the guests wouldn’t freeze to death if nature called. It seemed the courteous thing to do.

She smiles, almost giggles. She feels like she might fly apart at any moment. Her heart is in her throat, but she speaks around it, her voice only a little strained. “You butthead! Is that my bacon?”

He swallows the pilfered meat, not at all discretely. He is almost at the top of the stairs. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, girl. Bacon? Don’t see any of that ‘round here.”

She giggles, waiting for him, watching him come to her with obvious glee. “If I kiss you and I taste bacon –“

He easily shrugs off her teasing warning with a crooked smile and a shrug of his wide shoulders. His tone says he might pat her on the head, dad-like, if he wasn’t carrying a space heater. “Bacon is a manly taste, squirt. I expect I taste like bacon all the time.”

_Don’t call me squirt, you ass. Call me Red. Or Peaches._

She grins, looking up at him as he passes by. She wants to throw her arms around him. She reaches out and lets her fingers brush against his arm instead. “I bet you taste like all kinds of meat. Bacon. Ham. Steak.”

_Tommy’s dick._

He chuckles. “I do love meat.”

_I know. You deep throat that thing until the balls are on your chin._

“You sure do,” she giggles. It is a high-pitched, almost deranged sound. She snorts a little at the end of it, before she can get herself under control.

_God! Why does that fantasy turn me on so much! I’m such a weirdo._

As Joel passes her on his way to the bedroom, images flash through her mind. Tommy, his eyes closed, his mouth open, breathing hard, sweat beading around the collar of his flannel shirt while naked Joel, down on his knees, sucks his brother’s cock through the open fly of his jeans, Ellie, also clothed for some reason, kneeling beside him, watching intently, wanting to help, but Joel won’t let her. Or maybe this is Tommy’s new rule.

_Weird. Tommy’s usually the one do the sucking. Joel almost never does… unless I can convince him to help me handle Tommy’s big thing because I’m so young and inexperienced._

_I kind of like this new angle though. ‘Tommy the boss.’ Hmm. Mental note: explore that theme later. Joel and Ellie, love slaves to Tommy’s desire._

Joel opens the door. He looks back over his shoulder at her devilishly. She begins to blush. She looks at her boots. Normally she doesn’t fantasize quite so vividly about forbidden things like this when there are other people around. But the picture is so clear in her mind. She wants to touch herself. She wants to tell Joel what she likes to daydream about. She can feel her cheeks reddening deeper and deeper shades of crimson.

“Ready? You get everything taken care of?” he asks.

She looks up at him through her eyelashes and the hanging drapery of her loose auburn hair. She’s tugging at her fingertips.

_Say something! Fast! And not about the two of us blowing Tommy!_

“Um, yeah. I, uh, washed my,” she says, almost entirely without incriminating pause, “face.”

“Didn’t need to do that on my account, he says, one hand on the doorknob, the other hand holding the heater. “You’ve been lookin’ especially beautiful all night, girl.”

Inside her jeans, her dumb blue and white striped underwear vanish in a poof of super-heated, new car-smelling steam. She’s certain of it.

She smiles. She wants to say thank you, but she’s forgotten how to talk. To Joel, the suddenly shy girl has never looked lovelier, never looked more ready, never looked so finally just old enough for sex in all the time has known her.

She’s like a balloon blown up too much, he thinks to himself. Any sudden moves and she’s either gonna pop or fly around the room like a rocket.

She grins goofily, practically vibrating, supercharged, like the big dynamos down at the dam.

Can’t rush this, he muses. Not even a little bit.

“That’s not a bad idea,” he says, making a show of pondering her words. “Thinkin’ maybe I might want to wash up too.”

“Okay,” she nods. Her voice is tiny, quavering. She is brimming with more energy than she can safely contain.

Scared as hell, Joel realizes.

“Think maybe I’ll put this heater to work,” he says amiably, in no hurry. “While it’s doin’ that, figure I’ll grab a shower.” He adds, as though it’s the most casual thing in the world to say, “Wanna take a hot shower with me, Ellie? While the room warms up?”

She grins, her bottom lip between her teeth. Words want to stay locked up inside her. She forces them out. She has to. She’s not a kid anymore. Women say what’s on their minds.

“Sounds good, Joel.”

**. . .**

   
The little electric heater hums quietly in the corner of the bathroom. The door is closed. The cozy space is warming up quickly. Large fingers slowly unfasten the small buttons of Ellie’s maroon satin blouse.

“If you rip a button off my best shirt…” she murmurs, facing him, her hands on his waist, fingertips on his brown leather belt, her green eyes watching him work.

_I want him to spank me with this belt._

With good humor, he makes a ‘don’t worry about it’ sound; something between an exhaled snort and a chuckle.

“Best shirt I’ve ever owned,” she says, grinning shyly, her eyes fixed on his hands, her shirt halfway open now.

“Yep. It’s real nice,” he agrees quietly, engrossed in his work. “Hell’s bells,” he remarks, surprised, “You _are_ wearin’ a bra. I’ll be damned.”

“Shoot yeah I’m wearing a bra,” she snarks. “Not like I’m gonna run around all bouncy and free in front of the whole town.” She snickers, remembering the warm days of late summer, her pretty sundress, and the jiggling carefree fun of the fall festival. “Not on a night this cold anyway.”

Joel gently works his hands around her the top of her black jeans, tugging the hem of shiny, dark red satin free from the denim. He slides the soft blouse off her shoulders and leisurely, albeit somewhat haphazardly, folds it up. As he tosses it into the laundry hamper, Ellie makes a mental note to fish it out later. That shirt has to be hand washed. Maria said so. The shirt was a Christmas gift from Joel and Ellie plans to take good care of it. She wants it to last forever.

“This a new bra?” he asks, his hands sliding up her flanks, fingertips exploring the white lacey fabric of the band wrapping around her upper body.

“It is,” she says, looking up at him, wanting to make eye contact, seeing that his gaze is only for her breasts at the moment.

She smiles and uses her ‘Miss Ellie, New Teacher In Town’ voice. “It’s a ‘bralette’, Mr. Miller,” she says, adding just a hint of what she hopes is a fancy accent to the word. “Maria helped me pick it out last week. I think Andy charged me extra just so he’d keep his mouth shut and not tell you that I bought it.” Her smiling eyes crinkle at the edges. “Is bribery or extortion legal in Jackson? I feel like I should talk to the sheriff about that.”

“Are these bigger than the last time I saw ‘em?” Joel asks, transfixed. “Or is it the bra?”

Ellie wants to roll her eyes but doesn’t. Men are simple. They are easily hypnotized by boobs.

“They’re bigger,” she says, clearly pleased by the effect she’s having on him.

_I’ve been trying to show them to you since last summer, but you were too busy trying to be a Texan gentleman and ‘do the right thing by that young lady’ or something. Sheesh._

“Not much bigger,” she shrugs, making her breasts shift about inside the sheer, unlined cups. “Just a little bit. But I’ll take what I can get, you know?”

“Looks like more than just a little bit, darlin’,” he says, finally looking her in the eye.

_I feel like I’m something he’s about to eat for dinner._

She grins, doing her best to do so without looking too wild-eyed.

“You like it?” she asks. “Maria says a bralette gives a woman a ‘natural silhouette’ or something. It’s supposed to be very flattering for small-busted women. Especially – and these are her words, not mine – if she’s ‘young and perky’.” Ellie shrugs again, drawing Joel’s eyes back to her bosom. “That’s what she told me, anyway.”

“I swear, that woman knows somethin’ about everything, don’t she?” Joel husks.

“She sure does,” Ellie says, sighing contentedly when one of his hands comes up to her cheek, caressing it. She steps closer to him. “She sure does.”

With one easy move, his other hand slides around to her back and effortlessly unhooks her bra.

_That was slick. I’m impressed._

“Hey now,” Ellie chides, pretending to protest but letting him take the bra off, leaning forward just a bit, helping him. “This isn’t all about my new and improved boobs, is it? What about the rest of me?”

“I’m gettin’ there,” he replies easily, cupping her breasts. “Just couldn’t wait another minute to see these. That’s all.”

“Haven’t even taken my boots off yet,” she pouts, sticking her lip out for maximum effect.

“Shush,” he soothes.

She wants to play; she wants to pretend to fight.

_Hurry, Good Ellie! Say something like ‘I’m just a pair of boobs to you, aren’t I?’ Or maybe ‘My face is up here.’ Do it! Tease him!_

_Want to. But can’t. Feels too good right now._

She shudders, breathes, smiles as his hands caress her, squeeze her, bounce her tenderly in the supportive cradles of his warm, coarse palms.

“God, Joel,” she whispers, her eyes closed, her fingers kneading their way into the thick flannel of his shirt. He smells so good. “I’ve missed being with you like this.”

“Me too.”

“I love you so much,” she coos.

He dips his head. She tilts hers back.

They kiss.

**. . .**

   
_When did he get gray chest hairs?_

There’s no mistaking it. There are a few, scattered about, mixed in with the abundance of dark curls that carpet his chest and belly.

Naked, he turns, having just hung a fresh towel on the handle of the sliding glass shower door. He’s half hard, and she can’t decide if she should discretely scan his chest for more gray hairs or instead stare intently at his dick.

Bad Ellie makes the decision for her.

Joel smiles appreciatively. Under her hungry gaze, he hardens quickly.

“Damn,” she purrs. “It’s been a long time.” She glances up impishly. “ _Long_. Get it?”

He chuckles, planting his hands on his hips, happy to let her look.

She scampers over to him. He begins to reach out for the naked girl, ready to wrap her up in an embrace, but she drops to her knees.

“Every time I see this thing, I want to put it in my mouth,” she giggles.

Joel shakes his head. “The things you say, girl.”

“What?” she asks innocently, looking up, one small hand brushing her loose hair out of the way, the other wrapping around the base of his shaft. “It’s my birthday. I can have this for dessert if I want.”

Joel laughs. His erection bobs in front of her face. It is her turn to be hypnotized for a moment.

_Torpedo spotted, cap’n!_

_It’s coming right at us! Sound the alarm! Abandon virginity! Every girl for herself!_

She places on hand on his thigh. She cups his balls with the other. His hard member juts out proud and free, swaying slightly as he adjusts his stance to make room for her between his big feet.

“Hello, Lil’ Joel. I’ve missed you so much,” she giggles, talking directly to it.

“He’s missed you too,” Joel replies in a deep, mirthful rumble.

“Is that true, Lil’ Joel?” she asks sweetly. “Have you missed me?”

It bobs up and down vigorously.

Ellie cackles in delight. She didn’t know it could do this. She claps her hands gleefully.

“Oh my God! That is adorable!” she laughs.

“He does all sorts of tricks,” Joel says from above.

“The one thing he better not do is run away again,” Ellie says, half-pouting. “He always does that, doesn’t he, Lil’ Joel? He always gets me all worked up and then he takes you away before we get to the really good stuff. Isn’t that right?”

Lil’ Joel nods again. Ellie giggles and smiles.

“But you’re not going to let him do that tonight are you?” she says in a pouty, little girl voice, her hands on her thighs.

Joel twists his hips a little and Lil’ Joel shakes his head from side to side emphatically.

Ellie bursts into laughter again. She gives her friend a quick peck on the tip of his velvety soft head.

“Good boy,” she whispers, and takes him into her mouth.

“Jesus,” Joel shudders almost inaudibly. It’s been a long time for him. He spent more than a little time teaching this pretty little girl how to do this very thing, and even though more than a year has gone by since she last had the chance to practice, she still remembers. And she remains as eager to please as ever. “Goddamn, Ellie.”

“Mmmmmm,” she says, a smile hiding somewhere inside the non-word. She slowly works him deeper into her mouth, until more than half of him is inside where it is warm and wet and worshipful. Her tongue undulates along the bottom of his length, a trick she learned from her smutty lawyer book. She has practiced that move over and over on a child-sized plastic toy nightstick she found at the general store; yellow, hard but hollow, and nearly the same girth as Lil’ Joel. She made a joke and told Andy that it was to keep Joel in line. She keeps it hidden in her sock drawer. Her mouth is the only part of her that has known the smooth, long wonderfulness of that fantastic toy. Strangely, she’s afraid to use it anywhere else. She wants Joel to be her first, not some silly (though probably very satisfying) plastic toy.

“Ohhhhh girl,” he moans.

She smiles. Practice makes perfect.

She eases him out of her mouth. Strokes him with both hands. Looks up adoringly. He looks down, caresses her head, smiles. Later, it will occur to him to wonder where the hell she learned that trick. But at the moment, Lil’ Joel is doing all the thinking for him, and Lil’ Joel has never been particularly smart.

“You can cum on my face,” she says sweetly, working him slowly with her hands. “If you want.”

His stomach tenses. She can feel him throb harder in her slippery, sliding hands.

“Jesus, girl. When did you get such a dirty mouth?”

“Pfft. I’ve always been like this. And I’m serious. I’ll let you do that to me, if you want to,” she answers, stuffing him back inside her mouth before he can protest.

She intensifies her efforts, moving her head back and forth, slowly at first, and then faster. One hand holds him in place, fingers wrapped tightly around the base. The other hand gathers his balls, lifts them, works them very gently. She feels his hands come to rest on the sides of her head, cradling, not guiding. His fingers glide into the long tresses of her hair. She feels loved, treasured. She breathes through her nose, steadily, skillfully. Joel groans, pushes his hips forward, clenches his ass.

“Ellie,” he grunts. “Slow down.”

She increases the tempo.

His breathing is labored. His stomach tight and rigid. Heat radiates from his cock. Her mouth is a boiling, wonderful torment. Less than a third of him isn’t inside that incredible little mouth now. She never took this much of him before.

“Y-you gotta… sssslow down, girl,” he hisses.

She holds him by the shaft, grips him by the balls, not letting him get away, sucking him furiously, proving to him that she’s better than any of the women in Jackson, especially the ones she’s seen flirting with him. Man-hungry hussies, every one of them.

“Easy… Easy, girl… Ellie…”

Nobody is better for him than her. She is all he needs, or will ever need. She’s perfect for him and she’s going to prove that to him. This thing in her mouth is just for her. Her and no one else. Forever. Always.

“Oh fuck,” he grunts through his teeth.

She wants to make him come. He’s about to.

“Ellie,” he rasps, working his fingers down to her chin, tucks them under the hinge of her wide-open jaw, and pushes her away, forcing her to release him. She protests. So does his cock.

“ _Joel_ ,” she whines, pursing her plump, glistening lips.

“Ellie,” he says, breathing hard, eyes unfocused, cock shining and pulsing, taking a half-step back towards the shower, seeking some kind of refuge from this naked girl and her amazing mouth. His cock protests angrily and he tries to ignore it. “Slow down, okay? There ain’t no rush tonight, yeah?”

She pouts, for real this time. Kneeling on the tile floor, naked, beautiful, wanting to please, but frowning, unhappy. “Come on, Joel. I like doing that. It felt good right?”

“Felt damn good,” he says, still trying to catch his breath, holding on to the towel rack with one hand, knuckles white. His words bring a slight smile to her face, mollifying her some. “Damn good. But you want everything tonight, right?”

“The whole kaboodle,” she grins, using one of her favorite ‘Burt words’.

“Then I don’t need to blow my load when we’re just barely gettin’ started, girl.”

She stands up, griping. “Ugh. It’s not like I wouldn’t be happy to wait for you to… y’know… reload.”

She winks, trying to be playful again. She’s not happy about the way he threw the brakes on just as she was getting into the rhythm of it. It’s a bad omen. She hopes he won’t do it again when the time comes to finally fuck.

“Ellie,” Joel says, bringing her in for a loving hug. “I’m fifty years old.”

“That doesn’t bother me,” she says, trying not to get upset at him, focusing instead on the delightfully stiff feel of his crisp chest hair against her cheek.

“What I mean is,” Joel explains, “at my age, reloadin’, as you put it, takes a lot longer than it used to.” He chuckles and it resonates pleasantly through her body as she presses against him. He leans down and drawls warmly in her ear. “Could be that it might take me all night at this point if I blow my load right now. Might even have to sleep on it. You don’t want to wait until mornin’ to get the whole kit and kaboodle, do ya?”

She giggles at his use of the odd word. She sighs cutely, trying her best to sound petulantly exasperated. “Fine, grandpa. You can cum on my face some other time. Jerk.”

He chuckles. “You got yourself a deal, Red. After breakfast tomorrow, I promise I’ll shoot a big load all over your cheeks. Make you look like a Krispy Kreme donut when I’m done.”

She snickers. She’s had donuts at Shelly’s restaurant. Lightly crisped, delicate rings of sugar-glazed love. She likes the mental picture Joel has painted for her. “When you put it like that, how can I refuse?”

“Ready to get in the shower?” he asks.

“Yep,” she answers, still secretly craving dounts.

He runs his fingers through her long hair. “Might wanna put your hair up before we do. Don’t want to get down to it later one with a bunch of wet hair.”

“Oh! Good idea!” she says. “Back in a flash!”

She dashes out of the bathroom, leaving the door open in her haste, trailing warm air behind her, and scampers down the short hallway, veering right, cornering sharply into her room. She’s naked. It’s cold. She has to work fast.

She pulls a peach scrunchie out of the little plastic bowl on her bookshelf. It began life as a little yellow Lego bucket, but now it’s filled with an assortment of ponytail holders, barrettes, bands, clips, ties, and hairpins. She slides the poofy peach band around her wrist.

One cold feet, she dashes across the room and digs through the chest of drawers by her bed. Some warm socks would feel good right now, but that isn’t what she’s after. At the back of drawer, carefully hidden away, is Riley’s dog tag. She pulls it out by its chain and hugs it to her bare chest.

She whispers to the little metal disc.

“Please be okay with this. Please be okay with this,” she repeats, saying it a few more times, like a mantra, her eyes closed, seeking absolution.

She drapes the chain of the dog tag around the neck of her toy giraffe, where it sits atop the chest of drawers, keeping a watchful eye on the room.

“See you tomorrow,” she says, patting its stuffed little head, before turning to leave the room. She flicks the light switch and leaves these echoes of her old life in darkness, safe and sound and never forgotten.

Putting her hair up on the run, she zooms back towards the bathroom. She grabs the knob but it won’t turn. Someone with a strong grip is holding it shut from the other side.

“What’s the password?” Joel asks in a muffled voice from the other, much warmer side of the door.

“You ass, I’m freezing my tits off out here!” she wails, thumping the door with one foot.

“Password checks out,” he says, opening the way for her.

She zips past him, her hair bunned up in a sloppy, off-center ball held in place by a hastily wrapped puffy band.

“Ass!” she grouses cutely, hugging herself, soaking up the satisfyingly warm air of the little room, giving him a dirty look as he closes the door.

His arms come around from behind and hold her close. She smiles. He is hard, pressed against the top of her ass. She snickers and leans back against him, warm and loved.

“Ass,” she repeats, happily this time.

**. . .**

   
“Turn around,” he tells her.

She does, making a slow circle in the basin of the bathtub, stepping away from the hot spray of water, until her back is turned to it and him. He shields her from the gushing showerhead with his naked body. His hands come up, a bar of soap in one of them. He begins to wash her wet skin.

She breathes in the hot steam. Rivulets of water course down her body. His hands make delicate mounds of foam appear on her gleaming skin.

“That feels so good,” she sighs, captivated by the feel of his hands on her. He makes a satisfied sound, a wordless sound of masculinity, and continues to clean her. He is no hurry. This house has a big hot water heater. He takes his time. The back of her neck. Her shoulders. Under each arm. Her back. Her breasts. Her stomach. Lower. Lower still. She shivers and stretches, arching her back, pushing her bottom against him, feeling how hard he is. Big fingers slide through tight auburn curls. She isn’t a fifty-year-old man. She is a young woman. She can have as many orgasms as she likes. Already she can feel one slowly beginning to build inside her. He is patient. His hands are skilled.

Her voice is softer, almost drowned out by the hiss of the spraying water. “So good.”

“Let’s get this thing started on the right foot.” The rumble of his voice echoes off the tiled walls.

She groans and leans back against him. One of his arms curls around her waist protectively, holding her safely in place. Pink inner lips, delicate and wet from the water trickling down her, add wetness of their own to thick fingers. A spark become a tiny flame then a roaring blaze. She bucks her hips against his hands, whimpers his name, comes for him, just like the words growled in her ear command her to do. She moans. Shivers. Slumps back against him.

“Good girl,” he whispers, holding her tightly, one hand around her waist, the other hand securing the girl by her hot, quivering pussy.

“Joel,” she mumbles, her face turned, her cheek against his chest. Her hips move of their own will, pressing her greedy pussy against his palm. “Do that again.”

**. . .**

  
Suds run down his body, drifting lazily as they work there way south, getting lost in the thick, tangled hair, taking side trails, finding their own meandering way down to his legs. She lathers him up well, working her fingers into the hair, feeling how firm his muscles are. She drops to one knee, mostly shielded from the water by his wide shoulders, his broad back. He is still hard. Water drips from the head of his cock, runs down his shaft, falls in a tiny, twisting waterfall from his hanging balls. She lightly bites her bottom lip and begins to soap him up. She saved her favorite part of him for last.

“Remember what I said,” he chides gently, caressing her bare, wet shoulders.

She looks up, two soapy hands working his cock in a gentle, twisting motion. She rolls her eyes. “Fine. I guess I’d better wash your balls before this rusty ol’ antique musket of yours goes off and I have to wait till next winter before I can shoot it again.”

“Shush,” he grumps.

She generously lathers up her hands, hands the bar of soap to him for safekeeping, and begins to smear the froth across his scrotum.

“Careful now,” he cautions.

“Balls are sensitive? Really? Who knew?” she teases. “Don’t worry. I’ll go easy on you. I know how delicate you’re getting in your old age.”

She is gentle. And thorough.

“Why didn’t you think I was wearing a bra tonight?” she asks, making conversation.

“That fancy little thing was so thin, it didn’t keep you from flashin’ the high beams all night,” he murmurs, sounding half asleep to her. “Tommy saw ‘em before I did.”

Down in the swirling mist, she blushes. “You and Tommy were talking about my boobs?”

_Fuck yeah!_

Joel says nothing. He only chuckles in that same faraway tone.

She giggles deviously. “Shit. Do you think anybody noticed?”

“Everybody noticed.”

“Shit. I’m sorry,” she lies. She swishes the soapy film around his thighs and grins.

“Don’t be. You turned the head of every man in that room tonight.”

She blushes and pushes at him in her best ‘oh stop’ fashion. “Pfft. Perv.”

“When Tommy brought you out of the kitchen for your big number… damn, girl, I almost forgot the words to the song I was singin’.”

She grins, keeps her eyes on the insides of his legs, unable to meet his gaze. She watches the water as it dances with the hairs on his thighs.

“I was – ” she begins, fumbling her way through a plausible excuse as she crafts it on the spot.

_Horny._

“Nervous.”

_From being so close to Tommy._

“From being in front of so many people.”

_And thinking about you and me and him having sex._

“And thinking about having to sing in front of all of them.”

_Fuck, I want that to happen so damn bad!_

“Turned out it was sorta fun.”

He looks down at her. “Want to do it again one of these days?”

_Have a three-way with you and your brother?_

“Sing in front of everyone?” she asks.

“Yeah. Want to?”

_I want the two of you to fuck me so much that it keeps me up at night._

“Maybe.” She grins devilishly. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

“I’ll find a way to convince you, girl.”

_You sure will._

She’s reached the top of his legs. Her fingers reach up and around, soaping up the crack of his ass. He straightens up, stiffening a little as she explores him.

“Careful,” he says. He can feel her finger swirling around and around the tight ring of his asshole.

“Hey now,” she snarks, sticking out her tongue at him. “You stuck your finger up mine.” She gently pushes her finger against his backdoor insistently, puts on her best Texan accent. “‘Gotta clean out the corral, little cowgirl,’” she drawls. “That’s what you said.”

“That ain’t exactly how I put it – ” he begins, but swallows his words with a sharp, quick inhale. Her finger has slipped inside him. Close to her forehead, his stomach becomes hard. His voice has a slight strain to it. “Alright now, Ellie. That’ll do.”

She pushes in a little deeper. “Shh. Let me do my job down here.”

Past the first knuckle. Then the second.

“Ellie,” he hisses in a way that could be asking her to stop or hoping she’ll keep going.

All the way in now. Water runs down into the crack of his ass, washing over her hand, becoming a small spiral rushing its way down to the tub below. Very slowly, she begins to work the finger in and out, penetrating him carefully, cautiously.

_Don’t kill me, Joel. Don’t kill me. Cherry told me guys like this stuff. Maria says Tommy loves it when she does it to him._

“Ellie,” he groans.

_He likes it!_

Ellie grins, overjoyed.

_So fucking cool. It’s like I’m fucking him._

_Feels sorta weird in here. Squishy. Warm. God, this is turning me on so much._

“Ellie,” he repeats. The word gets a tiny bit sloppier, a tiny bit looser each time. Just like his asshole.

His cock, already hard, has become like granite. It’s not jutting out from his body. It’s almost standing straight up. Every little vein across the surface of it is prominent and swollen. His balls are a single, tight, large sphere, snug against his body, a puckered seam of flesh running up the center of them.

“ellie”

She curls her finger, making the ‘come here’ motion that Cherry showed Riley one lazy summer day in the school kitchen while Ellie, sitting there eating a peanut butter sandwich and looking bored, pretended not to watch while making a very detailed set of mental notes.

_His prostate should sorta feel like a big lump, kind of like a soft walnut, I think. And it’s supposed to be somewhere around…_

He gasps.

_Here!_

He grips her shoulders tightly. His cock begins to twitch. She cups his trembling ass cheek with her free hand, holding him in place.

_Maria says this is the special treat she gives Tommy sometimes._

_Joel sure seems to like it too._

He groans, pushes his hips towards her, his bulging cock twitching, needing, hoping.

_Makes sense. They are brothers._

He moans, grunts, makes another sound, something that might be her name maybe.

His cock is so hard it doesn’t even move anymore. It stands ramrod straight, like one of the flagpoles on the side of the dormitory back in Boston. She is certain that if she were to grab it now, a huge load would come shooting out of it, just like Cherry said. Just the other day, Maria confided in a low voice that sometimes Tommy comes so much and so hard from her magic finger that he’s barely interested in sex for two or three days after.

_Swirl. Swirl. Swirl._

She smiles. She feels powerful. Even more powerful than when she has him in her mouth.

He hisses, trying to exhale, trying to push down on that incredible little finger, wanting to get just a little more of it, needing this more than he’ll ever want to admit.

“You gonna cum?” she asks. Affectionate. Caring. A little smug.

He swallows. Steadies himself. Tries to focus. “If you keep doing that, yeah.”

She nuzzles her forehead against the marble slab of his veiny, trembling cock. He gasps. He’s so worked up that even the lightest contact feels amazing.

“Want me to stop?”

“Yeah. Unless you wanna wash something out of your hair in a few seconds,” he groans, pushing his balls against her face, making her close one eye. Parting her bangs with the length of it, his cock is pounding so hard it almost hurts.

She stops massaging his prostate. Goes back to finger fucking him instead. Over the next minute or so, little by little, with each stroke, she eases her finger out of him. Finally her fingertip slips free. He groans and slumps a bit.

“Jesus,” he shudders, his arms outstretched and dripping hot water, shaking hands bracing himself against the walls of the shower. “You got no idea how close that was, girl.”

_Yes, I do._

She smiles lovingly and uses her hands to gather clean, falling water. She works handfuls of it around his skin, rinsing the soap away. His balls slowly descend as his scrotum relaxes. His cock stays desperately hard.

The water is not as hot as it was earlier. It will be time to stop soon.

**. . .**

   
His room is warm. The door has been closed and the space heater running full blast all this time. He turns the dial, lowering the temperature, giving the machine a break.

“Close the door,” he says to the redhead wrapped in the light green towel.

She stands in the doorway for a lingering moment, summoning up her courage, before stepping fully inside. She closes the door behind her. The heat is sealed in here now. Just like she is.

_Oh man._

She watches him stand up from where he knelt beside the heater. He takes a few easy strides to the big bed.

_Isn’t he nervous too? Even just a little bit?_

He has a towel wrapped around his waist. He unfastens it with one hand and tosses it across the back of the nearby chair. He is naked. Naked and erect. And shameless.

_I guess he isn’t nervous._

“Come here, Ellie,” he says. His voice is deep, sexy, mesmerizing. His cock is pointing right at her. For a moment, she is sure it can read her mind. It knows every one of her secrets. She’s a little scared of it.

She takes a deep breath, exhales slowly through a mouth drawn into a plump little ‘O’.

His cock never stops watching her. It is challenging her. Calling to her. Seducing her.

She wants to run to him. She wants to sprint and then leap up into the air, arms outstretched like wings. She wants to fly through the air and land on the bed with a perfect floomp. She wants to act like a dumb, excitable kid just one more time in her life. Just one last time. Before everything changes for good.

She wants to fly a final time.

She doesn’t.

She is a woman now. She walks towards him, hips gyrating slowly, not exaggerated in a sexy strut, just the normal way a woman walks when she’s got hips like hers, hips like Tommy noticed, like Kim and Dan and many of the men have noticed. She walks. She doesn’t fly. He smiles. She smiles too.

She makes her way towards him on trembling legs.

“Just leave that towel anywhere,” he says in that same magnetic voice.

“Okay.” Her voice is as wobbly as her legs. Her fingers are clumsy. The towel leaves her body. His eyes arrive in its place, taking in all of her. She feels sexy. Honest to God sexy. Sexier than she’s ever felt, even back at the Tamarack House, in the tiny top floor room with the little nook bed and the purple underwear with the foam rubber padding in the cups and the peek-a-boo lace that felt silly at first, but only at first.

The old carpet of the darkened room is a deep ocean that threatens to swallow her whole, bisected by a single beam of bluish light falling in through the window. She walks it on clean, bare feet, making her way across the mysterious sea on the glowing bridge.

She stops at last. Caravans crossed the ancient deserts in less time than it took her to cross this room. She has arrived at her destination: Joel and his big bed.

His hands are on her shoulders. He reaches up and deftly pulls the scrunchie from her hair. It falls loose, tumbling down her back in a deep red cascade.

_Was I wearing that this whole time? Fucksticks!_

His eyes are dark, shadowed, hungry, scary. She isn’t cold but she still shivers. She wants to bounce and dance around. She wants to make a joke. She wants to run screaming from this room, this house, this town, out into the snow, out into the night, into the forest, into the safety of the wilderness, away from him, away from everyone, away from that big thing bobbing and throbbing down there. She bites her bottom lip and stays put instead.

The lights are off in the room. The moonlight from the winter’s night filtering in through the window casts the while world in various shades of dark and light grays mixed with a pale sort of blue. The shadows in the half light show off every big muscle of his body, every whisker on his face, every inch of the long, hard thing pointing at her, which seems fearsome now, like a club that he’s going to beat her with.

_No way that fucking thing can fit inside me. What the hell was I thinking?_

“You’re beautiful,” he says. Calming. Deep. Masculine but gentle. “You know that?”

“Thank you,” she whispers. Timid. Nervous. Her earlier confidence gone, vanished.

He fixes her eyes with his own. She can’t see the color in them in this light. They are dark, mysterious pools set deeply in the bearded beauty of his face.

_Fuck, he is so damn gorgeous._

“I love you, Ellie.” He says it simply, but sincerely.

Tears gather at the edges of her no-color eyes, glinting in the moonlight.

“I love you too, Joel.” She tries not to cry. She wasn’t expecting to cry, damn it. This feels like a trap somehow.

“I never said it, I reckon. Or maybe I have, but not nearly as much as I should,” he continues, somehow managing to be hard and naked and tender without any of it seeming silly, “but you and me… we came a long way to get to this moment. We’ve both been through our own hells, not just the shit we got through together, but everything that happened before we met too.”

Tears trickle down her face. She doesn’t wipe them away. She can’t. He’s holding her hands. He places her left hand on his flank, her palm over the round, puckered scar at the edge of his abdomen. His other hand slides up her right arm, to the inside of her elbow. His thumb stretches out to touch the bite mark on her arm, a fading scar now, soon to be two years old. They are survivors. She chokes back a sob.

“But we made it here, to this place,” he says. “You and me.”

She nods. She’s afraid to speak. She can barely keep a lid over the roiling cauldron of her emotions.

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way, Ellie. ‘Cause there’s nothing here in Jackson that would mean a damn thing to me if I didn’t have you with me.”

She cries. She can’t hold it in another second. She weeps and presses her face against him, wraps her arms around him, clings to him for dear life. She says she loves him. She says it over and over again. All she’s ever wanted is a family, and finally she has one.

He reaches down. Touches her face. She looks up at him. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. She knows.

They kiss, her cheeks wetting his. Joel never cries, so she lends him some of her tears.

**. . .**

  
“Dirty trick,” she groans, feeling the clean, soft bed sheets against the bare skin of her back, “making me cry like that.”

He chuckles but doesn’t say anything. His mouth is busy kissing her breasts, her belly, her thighs. His whiskers tickle her in wonderful ways. Her legs hang off the bed. He slides down and kneels on the carpet, between her knees. She spreads her legs.

“Trying to get me all emotional so I’d give it up easy,” she shudders, feeling his hot breath on her aching pussy lips. “Jokes on you, buddy. I was always a cheap date.”

He tries not to laugh and mostly succeeds. Humor is how Ellie deals with everything. Humor and lots of talking. He brings his mouth to her simmering little sex and hopes he can shut her up for a little while. She gasps, squeaks, and forgets every word she ever knew.

He pulls one of her inner labia into his mouth, sucking on it, tugging it, making her squirm. She writhes on the bed as he does the same thing to the other little pink lip. She grunts and tries to keep her hips still as he works his tongue into all of her tender, wet folds. She tries to say his name and fails to make the right sounds while he pulls both of her delicate her inner labia between his slick, wet lips, and sucks them together tightly, slowly gliding his way up and down her cunt, holding them snug in his mouth all the while. He hums a single, long, timorous note as he works. It tickles and ripples into her clamped together pussy lips and out into the rest of her body, spreading like waves on the surface of a pond. Her toes curl. She whimpers and quivers, every inch of her.

She squeaks his name aloud. It’s all she can manage.

He releases her swollen lips with a loud, wet slurp. She gasps and shudders, head to toe.

His tongue wiggles at the opening of her vagina, his lips pressed against hers, his hair curling into hers. He probes the entrance of her most sacred spot, going just deep enough to lap at the edge of the well. She squeals.

His tongue is zig-zagging now, traveling over and around and a little bit into every crevice, circling maddeningly around every hole, gathering the dewdrops of her wetness, leaving a scorching, sizzling trail in its wake.

She clutches at the sheets with straining fingers, keening, slowly losing her mind.

Circles. Circles around and around her sweet little clit, pink and hard, jutting just as proudly as his cock ever has. Her clit. Teased. Tormented. Tantalized.

She makes wild, unhinged sounds. Needing. Craving. Begging.

His tongue is flat, wide, wet, lapping all of her at once now. Slow, expansive licks. Tasting her. Discovering her. Blanketing her. She smooshes her cunt against him, begs, pleads.

A point now. The entire wet, devilish thing rolled into a tiny point, licking, looping, probing, targeting, attacking with precision accuracy. Electricity dances along her bare skin. She bends and twists. She begs him to never stop. Her words are nonsense things, but the meaning is clear. Around and around it goes, drawing all of her towards it, coaxing her, wooing her, gathering her up, like smoke to a chimney. She can feel her entire body being pulled into the quivering little pink protrusion. Somehow, she fits inside it, smushed down like a black hole from her comic books, crammed in there, she and all of her thoughts and dreams and wishes crowded together inside the little gleaming erect escape capsule as outside the entire universe is encircled by a tongue, not lapping and darting at her clit but more like French kissing it, then everything is suddenly swallowed up by perfect, wet lips, sucked into a waiting mouth, sucked and sucked and sucked until the only sound she can hear is the amazing noise she’s making before the universe bursts in a dazzling explosion of light and emotions, blasting her into a million parts, scattering her across the stars.

“Holy shit,” she pants weakly, blinking the dim room back into focus, safe in his arms, no longer trembling, together and whole again. He lays across her, half-covering her with his own body. He kisses her breasts, coaxing grateful moans from her.

She cradles his head to her chest, happy to let him suckle her for a while. His teeth lightly flirt with her tender pink nipples. It sends electric tingles along invisible lines towards her pussy.

‘No biting’ she wants to joke, but she’s afraid he might stop.

“Fuck, that feels good,” she grunts instead as he gingerly tugs at the little peaks of her tits with his teeth.

She runs her fingers through his beard. She cups his head and pulls him up to her for a kiss. They share the taste of her pussy.

_I taste pretty good. Like a new car._

She giggles into his mouth. He reaches under her neck and tugs a handful of her long, red hair just hard enough to make her moan instead. She puts her arms around his neck and they lay there, naked, pressed against each other. The snow falls outside the bedroom window.

His leg drapes over hers. His cock is pressing against her thigh. She loves that she makes him hard. It gives her a thrill that’s hard to define. His hand drifts down to her pussy. She doesn’t stop him. She opens her legs. She’s wet and ready.

His fingers are incredible, and she welcomes them, of course, but she wants something more. And soon.

_Oh God. He’s driving me crazy._

_Get to it already, Joel. I’m ready to go. You have to know that. Listen to the sounds I’m making._

His mouth still teasing her nipples, sucking hard at each of them in turn, hard enough to nearly bruise, one of his thick fingers slides to the middle of her sex, to the slightly open cleft between her puffy outer lips, dancing lightly along the edge of her smaller, more sensitive inner labia as he continues to slide his fingertips up and down the length of her little pussy, the heel of his hand tickling her pubic hair. She begins to shift about, trying to push herself into his hand. She wants more. She needs more. She reaches down, places her small hand over his, trying to guide him to her yearning, aching clitoris, trying to make him pick up the damn pace already.

_Oh man. Hurry, Joel. It’s in the same place it was the last time you were there. Did you forget? Do I have to draw you a map?_

“Slow down, girl,” he breathes into her ear, his voice a deep and calm river, taking her hand, his fingers wet with her moisture. He kisses her knuckles like a gentleman, places her hand up by his neck, safely out of the way. “No need to rush. Take it easy.”

“Can’t. Too horny.” She clutches at his shoulder, leaning into him, almost hugging him. She breathes into his neck, practically panting as he begins to play with her quivering sex again. He’s got her worked up to a lather, like a horse that’s running at full tilt, the kind that won’t obey the reins, the kind you just have to hold on to for dear life and let it go wherever it wants to take you. She groans, her body shaking gently with the sound.

His voice is as warm and smooth as good whiskey. “We’re gonna take our time with this, Ellie. It’s been a long time comin’ for both of us. Let’s not rush it. Let’s make it special.”

She moans from deep inside, a ravenous, plaintive sound. Her entire body is on fire now. Her fingers clutch at his back. She slides her foot behind his leg, rubs at his calf with the tops of her toes. She needs all the physical contact she can get. She needs him. How can he not be humping her by now? Doesn’t she turn him on?

“Let’s go _slow_. Okay, birthday girl?”

_Trust him, Ellie. He knows what he doing. Let him do this for you, boo._

“Yeah. Okay.” She gulps, leaning into him. She suddenly feels how naked she is. She feels vulnerable.

“Slow,” he repeats, drawing the word out, teasing her with it.

“You just like seeing me without my clothes on, you pervert,” she smiles, her eyes half open, looking up at him. Everything in the world that isn’t him is out of focus.

“Damn right I do, girl.” He kisses her. His hand parts her outer labia again, she moans into his open mouth, her tongue all tangled up with his. His fingers quickly become slick with her juices as the teases her delicate folds. “Damn right I do.”

She props herself up on her elbows.

“Can I watch? Is that cool?” Her voice is soft, higher than she wishes it were. She wants to sound sexy, husky, like Maria maybe, not like a nervous little girl, which is how she sounds to her own ears. She hopes he doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

He does notice. It turns him on.

“I’d like that,” he says, his breath warm and ticklish on her skin.

Her cunt is already half open, swollen and wet with lust. His fingers slide to either side of her plump pussy, gently opening her the rest of the way. He slides a finger in. She sighs happily. He works her pussy, fingerfucking her. She groans. It feels so good. She watches him do it. It gives her a primal thrill to see herself penetrated. She bites her bottom lip and grips the sheets. It’s not enough to give her an orgasm, but it feels so, so good.

“Oh man,” she whispers. “Fuck.”

He grins. She can see it in profile on the edge of his face as they both continue to stare at her cunt. He eases the finger out. A long, thin, clear ribbon of wetness connects her pussy to his finger. A draping string that slowly begins to bend as gravity claims it. It glistens as it stretches down towards the sheets.

_God, that’s so embarrassing!_

She blushes, looking away. She wants to cover her face with both hands.

“Goddamn, girl,” he husks, very pleased with her.

She had been watching with great interest but now her body betrays her, she falls back on the mattress, her arms suddenly limp and noodly, mortified by her own horniness. He eases the finger back in. She groans, his name drifting up out her scorching mouth like invisible smoke. She wants to watch him, she really does, but she can’t get up from the mattress. Her own twat has humiliated her with its embarrassing abundance of gooey neediness. He smiles. His big finger works slowly in and out of her. Several minutes drift by in an unfocused, blissful haze. She loves it, but she’s dying for something bigger. She’s practically running over with wetness down there. He pulls out his hand, uses a mixture of his saliva and her abundant lubrication to get a second finger ready for her. Side by side, the pair slides in easily. She groans loudly. Her hips almost leave the bed. He works inside her with both fingers for a few minutes, stretching her, loosening her, just a little more. Just enough. She feels so good. She knows she’s going to come again, very soon.

_He’s pretty good at fingering, I’ll give him that. Lots and lots of fingering. Fuck! Why isn’t he banging me for real yet?_

“Come on, Joel,” she grunts. “I’m ready. I’m really, really ready! We can move on to the next step whenever you want, dude.”

He slowly eases a third wet finger inside her. She winces a little, gasps softly, tenses up. It’s a lot to take, this trio of magic digits.

“Not yet, you’re not.”

“Fuck! I’m gonna come again in a minute. How much longer, Joel? Ugh! I’m so fucking horny!”

“Not much longer, Ellie. I just want you to be good and ready. I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to enjoy it.”

“Okay,” she shivers, “you’re the boss.”

“I swear,” he husks, “never knew a girl who’d complain about comin’ too many times.”

She giggles throatily, luxuriating in his touch. She feels herself relaxing, loosening, accepting the trio of delightful guests who’ve dropped by for a visit. They slide easily inside her now, tickling her g-spot a few times. She doesn’t know what that is or that she even has one. It’s just one more part of her body that feels incredibly good tonight. He’ll teach her all about that hidden little place inside her another night. One step at a time.

“Shit… I… I need… it… I _need you_ …Ah! Shit!… _Fuck me_ , Joel. C’mon already, damn it! Fuck me like it’s my birthday!”

“Mmm. You’re doin’ fine, you beautiful girl. We’re almost ready.”

She is panting, nearly there but not quite. It feels so fucking good. “God… okay… Yeah, okay… Just say when, buddy… Good to go up here… FYI.”

“Shh, Ellie. Let me take care of you.” His voice is so assured. Fatherly, almost.

She hates that tone of voice most of the time. Tonight, she savors it. She has been secretly nursing a new, forbidden fantasy for some months now. It first came to her during the dark, terrible winter that they escaped the cannibals and hid away from the world, just the two of them, until spring came and it was safe to move again. She dreamed it at first, and hated the dream. Then she began to fantasize about it, and hated herself even more. Now it has become the one thing that is certain to get her off every time – even more reliably than the fantasy of a threesome with Tommy.

She closes her eyes and curses herself for letting the images out of the locked box in her mind, the one wrapped up in mental chains and padlocks, all crisscrossed and bearing the crudely made handwritten sign that reads:

             **DO NOT OPEN**

             Not Ever Again!

         Seriously! Don’t Be  
        Such A Weirdo, Ellie!

She opens it anyway, like she always does, sooner or later, especially when she desperately needs to come and can’t find her path there by any other way. The lid opens and the dark, unnatural desire pours out like a black fog, filling her mind, igniting an even greater flame in her already burning body.

“Trust me,” Joel says, his beard wonderful and coarse against her neck, teaching her.

“I trust you,” she sighs. In her mind, she’s already slipping into the role she needs to play.

_I trust you, daddy._

She shivers. Groans. The three fingers stretch her. Daddy’s hands are so big and she’s so little. But she lets him do it. This is their secret though. She musn’t tell anyone.

_I’m a good girl, daddy. I’m a good g-_

She cries out in joy.

**. . .**

  
The moment has arrived. He lays her back on the mattress lovingly, almost as though he were about to tuck her in. Her hair is fanned out on the pillow; her whole body flushed with a yummy warmth. He’s big and hard and she can’t stop touching it as he lies beside her, caressing her body with those wonderful fingers of his. They kiss. She squeezes his big cock in her hand. Her fingers can barely wrap around it. It’s like holding that big Colt .45 of his, almost too much to manage. His cock is long and thick, hot, pulsing with the steady tempo of his heartbeat, and it feels so good in her hand.

She’s ready. They both know it.

_Oh God. This is it._

Warily, she eyes the rigid thing swaying back and forth between his legs.

_I want that inside me. Why the fuck do I want that inside me? It’s fucking scary! Look at it!_

“Roll over,” he tells her as he rises to his knees.

“With my butt up in the air?” she asks. All of Maria’s advice for when the time came hinged on Ellie being on her back and Joel getting on top for the ‘good, old fashioned stuff,’ as Maria termed it. She’s not sure she’s ready to veer off course like this. She was always the map-reader on their journey here. She likes sticking to the trails she’s made plans for. “So we’re not going to do it the regular way?”

“Not for the first time, no,” Joel says. “This’ll be a little easier for you. I promise.”

Visibly uncertain, Ellie rolls over onto her stomach. Lithe and limber, she easily springs up onto all fours, trying her best to be a team player, trying like hell not to think about the way her ass is out there on display. It’s all out there now. Her ass and other parts of her.

“Doggy style,” she says with a ‘been there, done that’ nod, pretending to feel confident. “No problem. I got this. I’m cool. I know all three sex positions!”

She snickers. She knows there are more than three, but beyond the basic trio, her knowledge gets a little fuzzy. Still, the joke gets a chuckle from him, so she is pleased.

“Not exactly like doggy style, but not too far off,” he says, placing his hand on her lower back, gently pushing her down until she lies on the mattress again.

Ellie rests flat on her stomach, trying to look over her shoulder at him while maintaining full body contact with the bed. She keeps her arms at her side, unsure what else to do with them. She has the same issue with her legs. She opens them, just a little.

“Like this?” she asks, feet up in the air, drumming her knees on the bed lightly, drawing his attention to her thighs. “Or wider?”

“Keep your legs together,” he says, pushing her feet down.

“Are you making this up?” Her voice is skeptical. “Is this a real sex position?”

“Yes, it is,” he says patiently.

“Does it have a name?” she inquires, genuinely curiosity overcoming her anxiety.

“I’m sure it probably does,” he says drolly, lifting her hip, sliding a pillow under her.

“What’s that pillow for?”

“To make it easier for us to do this. You’ll see.”

“Okay. But you’re sleeping on that pillow later. Not me.”

He laughs heartily. He knows Ellie likes to joke when she’s nervous. He wants her to be relaxed as he pushes her supple, firm thighs together, straddles her, a knee on either side of her legs, lowers himself into position. His cock throbs just above the two perfect, smooth mounds of her ass. She’s trembling. It turns him on. She looks up at him with so much love and trust and trepidation that it makes his heart ache.

“In my butt? Is that really the plan?” she mutters, visibly worried.

“No,” he says reassuringly. “It’s not in your ass, Ellie.”

“Oh thank God,” she responds with a deep, relaxing exhalation, adding for good measure, “I’ve heard that hurts.”

“What we’re gonna do is sort of like doggy style, but layin’ down. This way,” he says, holding himself up with one arm while teasing the crack of her ass with the head of his cock, held firmly in his other hand, “your backside acts sort of like a cushion. Keeps me from gettin’ too deep.”

“Isn’t deeper better?” she asks, no longer quite so worried. She feels horny and excited again. Once more, she wonders how on earth that thing of his can possibly fit inside this thing of hers.

_Mother Nature better know what the fuck she’s doing._

“Not every time. And not for the first time, that’s for sure,” he says, working his cock down between her creamy thighs, towards her wet and waiting cunt. She stiffens, willing but scared. In the pale light of the dark room, her large, lovely eyes widen, shifting rapidly between his face and her ass. His cock begins to pulse harder at the sight of her nervousness. “Ready?”

She nods mutely. She trembles, but only slightly. Her earlier confidence is fading fast.

He pushes the head of his cock insistently at the mouth of her sex.

_Fuck! It’s too big. I can feel it! It’s like a baseball bat or something!_

She holds her breath. Her body knows what to do. Slowly, she parts for him. He enters her, stretching her only a little more than before. She’s wet and open and begins to accommodate him. She gains a new appreciation for how carefully he has prepared her for this moment.

“Oh man,” she squeaks, nearly dumbstruck by the incredible strange and new sensation going on back there. She grips the sheets with both hands, resting her narrow shoulders on her fists.

_It’s going in! Oh man! It’s really going in!_

“You good?” he asks.

“Yeah. Just… feels a little weird.”

“Good weird or bad weird?”

_Big weird._

“Good weird. Very good weird.” She tries to giggle but she finds that she can’t. She’s hovering on the verge of breathlessness.

_It hurts a little. But I kind of like how it hurts._

With great slowness, he pushes a little deeper into her.

“God, Joel. That…” she whispers, letting her head droop until it touches the mattress. On either side of her ears, her fingers clutch wadded up fistfuls of bed sheets. “… that feels… _amazing_.”

“It sure does,” he breathes, lowering his body until he rests lightly on top of her. His big arms take most of his weight. The hairs of his chest dance teasingly along her shoulders. With her ass acting as a safety bumper, he’s as far in as he can go now – just a little more than half of him. He waits there, unmoving, while Ellie luxuriates in the sensation.

_I’m full. I’m full inside and I never knew I was empty in there until just now._

She groans.

_I’m all stretched out and filled up with him._

“Fuck, you’re so big,” she whispers, making his ego do backflips.

He growls in her ear. “Ellie, you’ve got the tightest little snatch… you’re drivin’ me crazy, girl.”

Tremors of pleasure vibrate through her. She wants to feel all of his weight on her. She wants him to pin her to the bed and take her.

“It feels huge,” she squeaks, sending a thrill through him.

He wants to pound her, hard and fast. But he forces himself to remain still. He stays like this for a time, not moving, letting her enjoy the sensation of having him inside her.

She moans happily. “So good.”

He gently eases himself partway out, until only the head remains inside her.

“No. Nonononono,” she babbles, words spilling out in a tumble. “Don’t go. Come back. You don’t want to do that. It’s cold out there.”

He chuckles, slides back into her with a delicious slowness.

“Ahhh…” she coos. “Welcome home, old friend. I missed you.”

He laughs; it vibrates through her body wonderfully. She tilts her head back to look up at him. He leans down so they can be cheek to cheek.

“Here we go,” he tells her, his mouth at her ear.

She nods and makes a soft, compliant sound, like a warm morning breeze through the pine trees.

He begins to work his cock in and out of her pussy with slow, steady strokes, first shallow, then deep, as deep as this position allows, then a mixture of the two. He is careful not to go fast. He loves his girl and wants her to enjoy every minute of her first time. Slow is the best thing for her. He’ll go slow for as long as he can stand it.

“Joel,” she praises, her delicate soprano stretching out the lone syllable of his name until it becomes a love song in her mouth.

He varies the rhythm, makes constant small changes to his thrusts, keeping her pussy guessing. She squirms beneath him. Her naked body glows in the moonlight with beads of dew summoned up from hot skin. She reaches up with one slender arm, tangles her fingers in his hair, pulling his head down to hers, keeping him there. He kisses her cheek, nuzzles the nape of her neck, nibbles her ear. He never stops fucking her. She moans, her body yearning for more of him. She whispers to him, telling him how good he makes her feel. Her pussy grips him, drawing him in. Her slippery thighs squeeze the half of him that her cunt cannot reach. Her ass is soft but firm, a perfect pillow to absorb the impact of his thrusts, sparing her inexperienced little cunt the worst of it as his need inexorably begins to overtake him, spurring him on towards greater speeds.

Her eyes are closed. Her mouth is open. Her turned head lies on the mattress, auburn hair spread out, making a shimmering halo for her. He looks at her gladly taking his cock, and her beauty overwhelms him. He thinks that if this broken world was ever sent an angel to guide it back to the light, surely it must be her.

Inspired, Joel fucks her harder. Faster. Deeper. Much to her delight. She sings a song of salvation for him. He doesn’t regret a damn thing he did to get her to Jackson, to give her a home, to bring the two of them together tonight.

His weight is on his elbows now, his forearms beneath her, wrapped across her stomach, holding her in place for a good, satisfying fucking. Inside her, his cock probes for that belly, for the womb hidden inside. His balls slap against the back of her thighs. She gasps and groans as he rides her skillfully. She feels pleasantly pinned by his larger, stronger body in a way that makes her feel indescribably feminine.

The joy of them together swirls around her. It’s wonderful but also strange and foreign. It’s too new of a thing to be entirely comfortable with yet. She can’t quite wrap herself up in it the way she needs, but it feels marvelous all the same. She calls out for him, carried along by him, driven, ridden, galloping into the world of adults. She hears her own name. Feels him inside her, over her, surrounding her. She isn’t sure where he ends and she begins anymore. She wants to open her legs, she wants to let all of him inside her, carry him in her womb, have him with her always. But she can’t. His legs pin hers shut. The hard edges of his pelvis slam into the twin swells of her pliant ass over and over, again and again, harder, faster, and she never wants him to stop, he cant stop, he cant and she wont let him. it feels incredible. her whole body inside and out better and fuller and complete. all of her. all of him. first two. then one. merging into something shes never felt before and shes so close to finally bundling herself in the bliss hes made for her and for a long wonderful perfect stretch of time she knows it will never end.

But it does.

He only barely pulls out in time. She’s empty once more, keenly aware of a void that she’s carried all her life without knowing it until tonight. He sits back with his ass on her legs, his body a clumsy and only partially controlled deadweight. He makes a sound like he’s in pain. Hot wet strips fall across her ass and along her back. He gasps, spasms, groans. His straining, erupting cock jerks and spasms in his trembling hand. His balls hang just below, swollen and heavy.

“j-jesus… ellie…” He sounds like an old man.

She spirals back into the real world. She didn’t want it to stop. She wanted to stay in the place they’d found together. She’s panting, sweating, the diffuse promise of an orgasm circling around her body, achingly close but still out of reach. She shivers, too near the edge of that waking dream world to let go for a moment or two. The magical cloud beneath her grudgingly coalesces once more into a bed.

“wow” She sounds like a little girl.

She feels him wiping her clean with an old hand towel. When it’s safe to do so, she rolls over onto her back to look at him. He has shifted off to the side of her, sitting upright in bed, slouching, legs open, knees up, still trying to breathe normally.

Slowly, as though she’s must recreate her body from a distant memory, she figures out how to make her muscles work. She sits up, wobbly, and scootches close to him.

She wants to say something, but she’s sure she would try to say too many things at once and make a mess of it. She kisses his cheek instead and smells herself in his whiskers. He wraps his arm around her and she nestles in close, kissing him again. She can see his cock, spent and already shrinking, down there between his legs. It is still wet with her juices. His pubic hair likewise carries her sheen and her scent. His dick looks silly now, but it always does when it isn’t hard. Goofy or dangerous: those are the only modes it has.

He traces his fingers along the edge of her face. She can smell herself on them too. He looks tired. Even his smile seems worn out. She sees the increasing flecks of gray in his beard, the deepening lines in his face. She wonders how many years she’ll have with him. A kind of melancholy steals over her. She feels she’s lost something but she doesn’t know where she put it. She can’t be sure if it ever existed at all. It’s the strangest sensation: feeling lost and found at the same time. A sort of happy sadness. She wants to cry a little. Just a little. She isn’t sure why.

He tells her something important, something she already knows but needs to hear all the same. She wraps her arms around him and buries her face into his neck. While the snow falls outside the window, they lie back together and, snug and warm under the blankets, she makes a pillow of his chest while he holds her close and gives her little kisses until the bittersweet feeling of love and loss and some indefinable, ineffable misplaced something finally passes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A woman’s first time is a very different experience than a man’s, or so I’m given to understand it. I love to do research for this story, and this time was no different. I asked around, took notes, tirelessly interrogated my wife like she was the sole suspect in a terrible, unsolved crime. Apparently for those dwelling in LadyLand™, (assuming my research is correct) when the time comes to give up the “Big V”, there are typically lots of anxieties and emotions, then a weird but not necessarily unpleasant few minutes of penetration, followed by a short-lived sense of loss, and finally the notion of herself as being irrevocably and fundamentally changed. I tried my best to reflect that in Ellie. Her first time is good, but complicated. To me, it seemed the most realistic way to handle it. 
> 
> In earlier drafts, I tried different approaches. One version saw poor Ellie struggling mid-coitus with a flashback to David and the burning steakhouse. Another one was the more immediately satisfying “super porn star fantasy” in which Ellie has amazingly satisfying sex, which is remarkable considering that it’s her first time and women tend to need a little experience with sex before they can become comfortable enough with their bodies and the act itself to enjoy intercourse to such a high degree. Or so I’m told. Let me tell you, it’s a very different experience for men. Almost all of us enjoy it right from the start. In fact, we enjoy it so much that we need more experience with it in order to enjoy it slightly less, so that we can make it fun for our partner too. ;-)
> 
> Anyhoo, I should probably write more here, but I’m wrung out from the busy holidays. I’ve spent almost three years of my life working on this story, teasing and taunting you guys and gals with the hope of sizzling hot Joellie action. Well, that part of the story is finally consummated (no pun intended). Only one more chapter to go now. 
> 
> See you in a week or two with the very last chapter of Flying To Wyoming, “Tomorrow.”


	4. Tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter of Flying To Wyoming. Joel and Ellie have settled comfortably into their home in Jackson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three years is a long time to tell one story. Thanks to my readers for sticking around until the end.

**“THE HOME AT THE END OF THE ROAD”**

**Chapter 04 - Tomorrow**

 

She dashes through the house on swift, bare feet, legs pumping fast, small hands chopping through the air, long red hair flying out like wings behind her. The stairs are just ahead of her at the end of the short hallway. Speed is essential. She’s done the math. Well, not actual math, because math sucks, but she’s done lots and lots of rock solid and utterly reliable guesswork.

With a perfectly timed leap, she launches herself into the air and soars like a bird.

“Liftoff!!” she yells triumphantly.

The world rushes towards her, a frantic, blurry collage of carpeting and furniture. With no margin for error, she curls herself into a ball, rolls in midair, feels the hard thump of the floor on her shoulder as she tucks, rolls, tumbles, careens past the coffee table and into the semi-cushioned edge of the sofa.

She laughs, breathlessly exhilarated. There is applause, cheers from the invisible crowd assembled for the show. Unseen, heard only by her, they rapturously celebrate her achievement. A world record. No one else has ever attempted such a death-defying stunt and survived to tell the tale and become rich from celebrity endorsements.

“Whoo hoo!” she brays, sitting up, legs wide, arms raised in victory, swaying slightly as the room spins around her.

“Teresa Riley Miller!” her mom shouts from the kitchen. “What the hell did you just do?!”

Teresa gulps, her eyes wide. She hadn’t considered what would happen at the end of her amazing leap into fame and fortune. Somewhere in the back of her eight-year-old mind, she had been dimly aware that the potential existed that maybe not everyone in the house would fully appreciate the majesty of her stunning accomplishment, but she hadn’t given much thought to the possibility that actual punishment might follow her inspiring flight into history.

Mom used her full name, which was never, ever a good thing. And she cussed too. Unlike Dad, who regularly peppers his sentences with bad words, Mom never cusses unless she is really upset.

From the other room, there comes a clatter of dishes and spoons – an angry sound.

“Sorry,” Teresa says preemptively, hopping to her feet with impressive coordination considering that the whole world continues to twirl woozily around her. She is still a little dizzy, drifting from side to side, when Mom rushes into the living room.

“What did you just do?” Mom asks, her face white and bloodless, clearly upset. She sees the bath towel tied around her daughter’s neck like a cape, looks at where the wobbly girl stands, clearly still trying to get her bearings, glances at the staircase and does some quick mental calculations.

Teresa watches her mom’s face, mistaking the cold, gut-twisting fear for some kind of inscrutable, grown-up displeasure, the sort that moms are particularly prone to have.

“Sorry,” she repeats, clearly beginning to regret her latest attempt to reach orbit. “Sorry, Mom.”

Mom takes a deep breath. She considers beating the hell out of her child with the wooden spoon in her hand. Thinks better of it. She almost picks her reckless thrill-seeker of a daughter up and hugs the living shit out of her, hugs her so tight that the girl will finally understand exactly how fucking dangerous stunts like that are. She doesn’t do either of those things. She stuffs her unseen terror down and speaks in a calm, motherly voice.

”What did we say about you jumping off the stairs, Teresa?”

“That I’m not supposed to do it anymore,” the girl says glumly, looking at her feet.

“And what did you just do?” Mom asks very sternly. “ _Look at me_. What did you just do?”

Teresa sighs. Adults made you say things you didn’t want to say. Things everybody knew already, so why say them? Adults had too many rules, and every rule was dumb. Teresa made a secret, silent vow to not be like that when she grew up. She would be a cool adult, who didn’t care about rules. Or chores either.

“ _Teresa_ ,” Mom says in a very specific warning tone. It’s like a dog whistle that only children and moms can hear. A spanking is sure to follow if a little girl doesn’t straighten up right away. “What. Did. You. Just. Do?”

The girl’s voice is very small. It carries a jumble of embarrassment and resentment and regret, all mixed up in the high soprano of a child’s voice. “Jumped off the stairs.”

Mom doesn’t ask why. She already knows why. A certain uncle had shown her daughter a movie about the Apollo space program two months ago, and all her child wants in the whole wide world is to walk on the moon now. Mom asks a more pressing question instead.

“Are you going to do it again?”

“No.”

“Do I have to whip your butt again?”

“No!”

Mom seems skeptical. Teresa fidgets and stares at the floor.

“Do you think we should tell your dad about this?”

Teresa looks up, her mouth agape, terrified, hazel eyes wide open. Dad is the ultimate weapon in her mom’s arsenal. Dad is big and funny and gentle, right up until Mom flicks a switch that only Mom knows how to find, then Dad becomes a big, scary, paddling giant that there’s no escape from.

“No!” the girl yelps.

Mom crosses her arms, wooden spoon still in hand. Her green blouse has a light dusting of sugar or flour on it – cookies maybe, if Teresa’s lucky, although the way things are going right now, there might never be cookies in her future ever again. The apron Mom wears used to be white, but a million meals have left a variety of interesting stains on it. Her long auburn hair is piled up on the back of her head in a mom bun. She wears old denim jeans, thinning at the knees, unsuitable for outside work anymore. Her housepants, as she calls them. Her thick, warm, woolen socks are a shade of green that almost matches her shirt (no shoes allowed inside Mom’s house. That’s rule number one).

Mom taps the spoon against her shoulder, studying her daughter with green, stern, parental eyes.

“Are you _sure_?” Mom asks. “I bet he’d really love to hear all about this.”

“Please don’t,” Teresa pleads, running over to her mother, grabbing by her hips. “Dad’ll kill me. He’ll bury me in the garden!”

In her icy dread, Teresa fails to notice the barest flicker of a smile tug at the corner of her mother’s mouth. Dad likes to tell the kids spooky stories; often involving earlier brothers and sisters from before they were born that misbehaved terribly and disappeared without a trace, but there may be some clue to what happened to them. There must be _some_ reason mom’s garden is so green and healthy. Teresa is almost one hundred percent certain those stories are not true, but in moments like this, even one percent of doubt is too much.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I won’t do it again.”

Mom drops to one knee. She inspects her unruly child, poking, squeezing, looking, worrying.

“Nothing broken?” she asks in the soft, loving voice that she normally uses. It makes her girl smile. Regular Mom is back. All is forgiven.

“Nope. I’m fine,” Teresa beams. “I know what I’m doing,” she adds, nodding, pleased with herself. Those incredibly accurate guesses about trajectories and reentry that she’d calculated before her brief space flight clearly paid off.

Mom hugs her. Teresa smiles. Mom always has lots of hugs stored up, and she dispenses them at the drop of a hat.

“Stop _scaring_ me like that,” Mom says firmly, releasing her, pushing her daughter’s thick mop of unruly red hair back into some semblance of order.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“I know you want to be an astronaut, but this isn’t Cape Canaveral, sweetie. You’re not cleared for take-off inside the house, okay? You want to jump off the dock into the lake the next time we go swimming, you have my permission. But no jumps in the house. _No. Jumps_. Understand?”

“I do.”

“Okay then.”

“Did you ever see it? Cape Carnival?” Teresa asks. Her mom traveled all over the world before coming to Jackson to get married and be a mom. She hopes she can see all that stuff too, one day. “Did you ever see any rocket ships take off?”

“No, sweetie,” Mom says, not even bothering to count how many times her daughter has asked her some version of this question before. “I didn’t. But your dad did. When he comes back inside, you can ask him all about it.”

“You’re not gonna tell him what I did?” the girl asks with adorable hopefulness.

“No,” Mom says. “Not this time, I guess. Now go play. I gotta make lunch.”

“‘Kay.” Then the girl turns and dashes back up to her room, where she keeps her precious plastic rocket, a zoo’s worth of stuffed animals, her inherited Savage Starlight comic books, and a million other things powered by imagination.

Mom stays behind, watching her eldest daughter as the girl disappear up the staircase and around the corner, towards the little bedroom that used to belong to her, back when she was a girl too, way back when she first moved to Jackson.

“That kid,” Ellie sighs wistfully. “She’s gonna give me so many gray hairs.”

Her littlest one, Laura Ann, peeps around the edge of the kitchen door, watching, like she always does. She’s a quiet child, not exactly timid, but cautious. Smallish. And smart. Very, very smart. Ellie spies her as she turns around.

“Whatchoo doin’ down there, sugar doodle?” Ellie asks in a cute, cartoony voice, a big smile on her face.

The little girl smiles back and stretches her arms out wide as her mother reaches down to pick her up.

“You watching your big sister get in trouble again?” Ellie grunts. Laura turned six just a few days ago, and even though she’s small for her age, it’s getting more difficult to carry her around, even for short distances. The day will come soon when Ellie will never pick up her daughter again. She dreads the day. She hasn’t lifted either Teresa or her son in years. The boy weighs almost as much as she does now, and as fast as he’s growing, in another couple of years, he’ll be as tall as his mom. Soon enough, he’ll tower over her, just like her husband does. She misses the days when her boy was little. Her children are growing up too fast for her heart to keep up.

“Yeah,” Laura giggles and wiggles. Being picked up by Mom is a rare treat these days.

Ellie sits her girl on the kitchen counter, next to the sandwiches she’s making for lunch. Chokecherry jam, homemade, spread generously over slices of fresh bread. Jackson has a bakery now, run by two women, newcomers from Hailey, Idaho. Ellie is thankful for them. She’s become a good cook, more from the practice brought about by sheer repetition than any natural talent. But she’s never liked making bread, or cake for that matter. It never turns out quite right. However, her inability to get bread to rise properly has led, in a roundabout way, to her reputation as the best brownie maker in all of Jackson.

“I like jelly,” Laura says. “It’s yummy.”

“It sure is,” Ellie agrees, not correcting her. The subtle differences between jam, jelly, and preserves took her a while to learn too. Holding up the plastic butter knife for her daughter to lick clean, she says, “Here. A treat for not jumping off the staircase and scaring me half to death.”

While Ellie folds the sandwiches up, Laura giggles and holds the utensil in both hands, getting as much of the jam on her face as in her mouth.

Ellie cleans her up, wiping her face and hands with a damp cloth, sets her back down on the floor, and carries the plastic plate of sandwiches to the kitchen table.

“Be right back,” Ellie says as she heads to the door at the back of the kitchen.

Laura nods, not really listening. Her attention is on the homemade yarn doll Aunt Maria made especially for her as a birthday gift. It is a new toy, and that’s the very best kind of toy.

Ellie steps out onto the back porch. It is late summer in Jackson. The breeze is still warm. Cooler winds are coming, the first heralds of winter, but Jack Frost is not here quite yet.

All morning, she has listened to the thump-chock rhythm of Joel splitting squat chunks of sawed-up trees, castoff pieces from the sawmill for the most part, into usable blocks of firewood. Shortly before Teresa sailed through the stratosphere, the noise finally stopped. Since no one came running into the house gushing blood and screaming, she could tell all was well despite the silence. Her husband’s words couldn’t carry clearly through the thick walls of the house. Outside under the warm sun, she hears them now and smiles.

“And why do we line it up east-west like this?” he asks, his voice barely strained by the heavy armful of wood he’s carrying.

“So the wind catches it and dries it out,” her son answers, toting his own chunk of wood. Only a single piece, but still very big for him. “Right?”

“That’s right,” Joel says. “Green wood ain’t much use in a fireplace. Burnin’ green wood will get you more smoke than fire. So we gotta get air in there to cure it. That’s why we stack ‘em back and forth in this pattern. So the breeze’ll blow through and dry ‘em out.”

“And the two-by-fours down there keep everything off the ground so the damp stays out, right?” the boy asks, trying to make sure he’s understood it all. All of ten years old now, the boy is glad his dad has finally started letting him help with stuff like this and the boy wants to make sure he’s doing it right. He wants to impress his father, not truly comprehending that he is already his dad’s pride and joy.

“That’s right,” Joel says. “But make sure you line ‘em up out of the shade, so the sunshine can get to the stack. And stack ‘em good and stable, so it won’t fall over. But make sure there are little gaps between the pieces. Don’t squeeze ‘em together too tight.”

“Okay,” the boy says, readjusting the piece he had just added to the stack so the air could squeeze in there.

Joel straightens up, stretching his aching back. He flexes his hands too – they hurt most days, especially so on cold mornings. The knuckles are growing stiff with age. JJ, his son, continues to pile up the firewood, following the pattern his father started. The split logs are cumbersome to the little boy, but he struggles without complaint.

Joel spies his wife watching proudly from the back porch. He throws her a wink and tells the boy, “And whatever you do, son, don’t step back and put your foot in your momma’s garden. Took her years to get it just the way she likes it. You squish so much as one carrot and it’s every man for himself.”

“I won’t,” JJ grunts, trying to lever another piece of wood onto the long, rectangular stacked wall. He’s just a little too short to reach that high. Joel takes it the rest of the way.

”I coulda got it,” the boy protests.

“Or you might’ve knocked the whole stack over,” Joel says matter-of-factly. “No shame in askin’ for help with somethin’, son. Try to do more than you’re able, and you’re just makin’ more work for yourself and everybody else. Yeah?”

Joel Junior nods, only a little upset that he couldn’t do it by himself.

“Everybody needs help sometimes, son. Just ask your momma over there,” Joel says with a nod of his head in Ellie’s direction. “She ain’t opened a single jar with her own hands since I came along.”

“Ha,” Ellie says, smiling at her son, proud of him. “That must be one of those dad jokes I’ve heard so much about.”

“Look how much we got done already, mom,” the boy says, beaming.

“Wow,” she says, making certain he can see that she is impressed. “That is a heck of a big pile of wood, guys. I’m getting tired just looking at it.”

“We’ll be warm all winter,” JJ says, using the same words his dad uses every year when stacking the firewood. After years of watching, he’s finally being permitted to take part in the important ritual. He feels like a man now. He sees his father has crossed his arms in manly accomplishment and so he does that too. If he could grow a beard like his dad, he would.

“Looks like a lot of hard work. You two ready for a break?” Ellie asks, adding in an enticing voice, “I’ve made jam sandwiches.”

JJ whoops and dashes for the backdoor. His father follows along behind at a more sensible pace.

The boy zips past her, hungry as always. Ellie pats his back as best she can before he’s through the door. She watches Joel approach. He’s north of sixty now, still big, still strong. But he’s worked hard all week on the construction crew. And his only day off, this warm Sunday morning, has been spent splitting and stacking wood. His back has him moving a little slower than usual. He flexes his fingers discreetly as his hands swing by his thighs in time with his stride.

“How are you?” she asks, a touch more concern in her voice than she intends.

“I’m fine, girl. Don’t you worry about me,” he chuckles, dismissing her worries with a cocky grin, climbing the two steps up the porch in a single stride. He enfolds her in a burly, sweaty hug. “See? I’m doin’ just fine.”

Ellie murmurs into his chest,” Mmm. Somebody’s damp and warm and muscular today.”

“Just the way you like me, woman.”

“Sweaty and gross?” she teases. “That’s news to me.”

“Shit, Ellie. If you didn’t like it so much, we wouldn’t have so many kids.”

She giggles and pushes at him. “Let me go, you horndog. I have to get in there before JJ eats all the food. Our poor girls will starve to death if I don’t stop him from eating us out of house and home.”

“Growin’ boy,” Joel says, following her inside. “Gonna be big, just like his dad.”

The father’s proud boast puts a smile on the mother’s face.

**. . .**

  
Lunch goes by fast. It usually does. JJ wolfed his sandwich down as though it was the first meal he’d had in weeks. Little Laura poked at hers, eating it slowly, in bird-sized bites. Teresa talked her way through her meal, chewing and making words at the same time, asking her dad about the space shuttle launches he’d seen on the TV news.

The kitchen is empty now. Ellie tries to bring some sort of order to the room in the destructive wake of the family-shaped tornado that has passed through. Dinner will be even messier, most likely. She briefly ponders bringing Teresa in here to help clean up. The girl hates chores, which is all the more reason to make her do them. Not that her daughter will understand that. Ellie didn’t. Not until she was older. That’s just the way of things.

The timer on the stove runs down and the bell chimes. The cookies are done baking.

Teresa and Laura appear in the kitchen doorway as if by magic.

“Cookies?” Laura asks.

“You gotta wait your turn, Booger,” Teresa nudges her little sister with an elbow.

“I was here first!” Laura protests.

“I’m older,” Teresa says, proud of the accomplishment of being born earlier. “And bigger.”

“JJ is bigger and older than both of you,” Ellie deadpans, pulling an oven mitt onto her hand.

“Yeah, but he’s not here,” Teresa says.

“Maybe you should go get him,” Mom says.

“Okay,” Laura says, dashing off to find her brother like a good little sister should.

Teresa doesn’t move from her spot in the doorway. She watches her little sister dart through the back door impassively.

“Teresa…” Mom says flatly.

“ _I will_ ,” Teresa deflects, “just as soon as I get a cookie.”

Ellie tries her best not to smile. “Good Lord, girl, what am I gonna do with you?”

“You could give me a cookie,” Teresa grins impishly. All of four feet tall, the girl always seems ready to take on the whole world.

Ellie gently spatulas a warm, soft sugar cookie free of the baking sheet. Teresa teleports to her side and reaches for it. Ellie lets her have it. Some battles aren’t worth fighting. Instead, she spatulas four more cookies onto a plastic plate.

“Here,” she says, handing the plate to her daughter. “Take these out to your dad. And everybody better get a whole cookie. If I hear of anyone getting just half a cookie, I’m gonna be very upset with a certain daughter of mine. Okay?”

“‘Kay.” Riley is out the backdoor in a flash, plate in hand, still chewing the warm, buttery treat.

A moment later, Laura pokes her head inside, through the same door Teresa just used. She is alarmed, excited, in full snitch mode.

“Mom! Mom! Teresa’s got cookies!”

“Yes, I know,” Mom replies, carefully stacking the rest of the cookies in a covered dish, saving them for dessert tonight. As useful as it is to have her most well behaved daughter keeping tabs on her older, wilder sister, Ellie doesn’t want to encourage that kind of behavior. What is cute in a child is repellent in an adult. She uses a gentle but chastising tone. “I sent her out there to give them to all of you, you little tattletale.”

“Oh! Okay!” Laura says, disappointed and a little embarrassed, disappearing outside without another word, her cheeks red.

“Told you, you little butt kisser!” Teresa says, her voice muffled by the closing door. “I oughta smack you.”

“You pop your sister, and I’ll pop you,” Joel drawls benignly enough, his voice carrying easily through the walls. He’s usually content to give the kids a long leash with this sort of thing. The safest way to learn to stand up for yourself is with your brothers and sisters. The stakes are lower than they will be with others, later in life.

“Can I do it, Dad?” JJ asks. “I wanna get her back for flushing the toilet while I was in the shower.”

“I’ll kick your butt!” Teresa boasts, fearlessly. Her brother’s only six inches taller than she is, and that’s not really _that_ much bigger, right?

“Just try it!” JJ challenges.

“Cool it! Both of you!” Joel warns. Dad only barks once. The kids have reached the end of their leashes. They fall silent. His voice remains low, but very firm. “Sit down and eat your damn cookies, kids.”

Inside, alone in the sanctuary fortress of her kitchen, Ellie smiles. With a soft chuckle, she stands on her tiptoes and places the dish of cookies on top of the fridge, where no one but her husband will be able to reach them.

“Have to keep an eye on him,” she giggles. “That man’s worse than a damn raccoon when it comes to sniffing out food.”

**. . .**

  
Outside, the firewood is finally stacked. The kids are playing in the backyard, running and laughing along the edges of the garden, circling around and around the garden gnome at one corner and the chicken coop at the other. Excited clucking and laughter fills the air. On the back porch, Joel sits in his rocking chair, keeping a watchful eye. He sips at a cold glass of water, brought out to him by his wife. He’d asked her to join him, but she still has a few things to do before she can finally kick back and watch the day go by.

Indoors, she carries a large clay pot, home to a new eggplant, through the house, from the living room to the kitchen, chasing the sunlight as it shifts from one window to another.

The kitchen windowsill has been modified by Joel to be a little wider than normal. Upon it is a long row of potted plants sitting in the sun. Dwarf tomatoes; yellow, red, and orange mini peppers; and teensy, sweet Alpine strawberries (Mom’s special treat – hands off if you know what’s good for you). These plants spent the morning in the living room and then migrated to the kitchen, part of Ellie’s daily schedule to get them as much sunlight as possible.

She’d found a book on apartment gardening a few years ago. Every summer since, she’d added a new plant to her indoor collection. This year, it was small-fruited eggplant, a transplant from the enclosed greenhouse garden of another woman in town. It was ready to pick, from the looks of it.

Ellie studies the assorted plants, turning the pots slightly where needed to maximize the light they’re getting.

“God,” she sighs, hands on hips, more than ready to take a break. “Okay… lemme think… what’s left? Can I finally sit down for a minute?”

Someone knocks on the front door.

“Guess not,” Ellie mutters.

She stalks through the house, grumpily. She’ll put her best fake smile on when she gets to the door, but not one moment before.

“I swear to God,” she grumbles under her breath, “if that’s Mrs. Givener… I can’t attend every single stupid church meeting. Some of us have children that aren’t grown yet, you old, holier-than-thou cow… I’m up to my eyeballs in dirty socks and beef marinade and a teddy bear that needs new stitches and…”

Her hand closes around the doorknob just as whoever it is outside knocks again. Ellie forces a smile into place. Every minute she’s politely declining an invitation to gossip and socialize with the Jackson Quilting Circle (the ‘Stitch and Bitch’ as she likes to call it) is a minute that she’s not relaxing in the shade with her sweaty and sexy husband. Quiet conversation was its own sort of foreplay when you were married and surrounded by rambunctious children.

“Hello neighbor!” Ellie says in her best, overly friendly voice as the door swings open.

“Hello yourself,” Maria says, snickering at Ellie’s theatrical tone.

Ellie’s plastic smile quickly becomes genuine.

“Hey, you! Come in! Come in!” she says, stepping aside, making room for them to enter.

Maria steps into the house, Tommy and their son, Matthew, close behind. All three are wearing holstered pistols. Matthew, now thirteen, is finally old enough to be entrusted with one: a .22 revolver. Smallish, but still lethal. A good gun for training, but one he can only wear when his parents are with him and are wearing guns too.

“Howdy,” says Tommy, giving Ellie a friendly hug.

“Howdy,” says Matthew, getting a hug from Ellie. His voice is beginning to crack. He tries his best to sound like his dad, but it will be a while before he will have the deeper tones of a Miller man.

“Get in any shootouts today?” Aunt Ellie asks the boy.

“No,” Matthew says, a little uncomfortable. He’s trying hard to be a man. He has no idea why all the women in town want to tease him about it. “Not today.”

Ellie would hug Maria too, but she’s holding a large plastic mixing bowl filled with fruit: peaches, pears, and large, red, beefsteak tomatoes, with a couple of more colorful heirloom tomatoes mixed in.

“I’ll trade you these for an eggplant or two,” Maria says, as though such a lopsided offer is completely fair.

“Deal,” Ellie says quickly, with no hesitation whatsoever. Fruit is expensive.

“Uncle Tommy! Aunt Maria!” Laura exclaims. Dad had sent her inside to check on her mom. Now she bolts across the living room into the waiting hug of her uncle, who may be her favorite person on earth.

Tommy lifts her up easily. Forty pounds of little girl is nothing to him.

“How you been, Baby Bear?” Tommy asks, swinging the squealing girl around.

She cackles in delight.

“Your daddy home?” Tommy asks.

The girl doesn’t answer. She just laughs and wiggles.

“Back porch,” Ellie grins, taking the bowl from Maria.

“C’mon, Baby Bear,” Tommy enthuses. “Let’s go surprise your daddy!”

He clomps through the house in his boots, Matthew close behind.

“Shoes off?” Maria asks.

“Please,” Ellie nods. She carries the food into the kitchen while Maria works her feet free of her boots.

“Uncle Tommy!” she hears her children exclaim from the backyard.

“Hey, JJ! Hey, Monkey Butt!” Tommy says to her son and daughter, the closing door muffling his voice and the giggles of her children.

**. . .**

  
They can hear the men talking outside. The children are chattering too. The women are alone for a while. They sit at the kitchen table.

Maria asks, “How are your little monsters?”

Ellie chuckles. “Constantly hungry. Endangering themselves daily. Yours?”

“Growing like a weed.” She takes a drink from the hot mug of barley and chicory, the closest thing to coffee that can be found in Jackson.

“I can see that,” Ellie says, sipping at her own mug of chicory. “I swear that boy is taller every time I see him.”

“He’s thirteen. Got his vaccination shot this week.”

“I heard. How’d he like his forty-eight hours in the trailer?”

“Loved it. First chance he’s had to get away from us. I snuck him a dessert or two, because I’m such a good mother. Now he’s officially immune.”

“Did he get homesick? Some kids do.”

“A little. But he hid it well.”

“Don’t know why they don’t wait longer to give them the shot,” Ellie says.

“Following Copper’s orders. He said puberty may make the symbiote easier to live with. Codependent development or something. He based his model off of you. He tried to explain to me a few times. Very technical stuff. I nodded like I understood, but I didn’t.”

“Just like every conversation I ever had with the man,” Ellie reminisces cheerfully. “Still, it must be scary for them. Thirteen is so young.”

“Hell, Ellie, I was thirty when he gave me the shot, and it scared the shit out of me,” Maria confesses.

“That’s perfectly normal. When I first got the cordyceps, I was a little scared too,” Ellie chuckles, trying to find a little humor in the most traumatic event in her life.

“If only Mark could see how far we’ve come. Everyone here’s immune. Almost everyone in Wind River too. A few more batches of the serum will do it. The folks over at Woods Crossing are asking about the shot now. If they decide to do it, then Sarlida’ll do it too. It’s like follow the leader with those towns.”

“Mark was right,” Ellie says. “We’re going to take the world back one community at a time.”

“It does seem to be working. Incredible,” the older woman agrees.

Ellie looks out her kitchen window, at the bustling town. “And little baby Matty Miller is now about to discover girls. Truly, a new age is upon us.”

Blindsided by Ellie’s joke, Maria snorts into her drink. She coughs and laughs. “Trust me, he already has. Oh! And he’s shaving now.”

Ellie raises an eyebrow in surprise, peering at her older friend over the rim of her porcelain mug. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Just started. It’s not exactly a prize-winning moustache,” Maria shrugs, “Scraggily thing, in fact. But he’s proud of it. Tommy’s even prouder, I think. Any day now, he’s sure that fuzz’s gonna cross that boy’s lip and connect in the middle. Apparently, on that day, Matthew will be a ‘real man’ or something.”

“Sheez,” Ellie exhales. “Shaving already. And he’s got a gun now.”

“Yeah. Time to teach him to be responsible. He’s growing up.”

“Had to sooner or later, I guess.”

“It’ll happen to yours too.”

“Don’t say that!” Ellie laughs. “I plan to keep them little forever. I’m only going to feed them once a week from here on out so it’ll stunt their growth.”

“Good luck with that,” Maria chuckles. “I tried my best to keep Matty my little boy forever. But he grew up anyway. The little shit did it just to break my heart, I think.”

“Yeah,” Ellie says, suddenly melancholy. It passes quickly, like it always does, but she knows it will return. She feels it more and more often. One day her children won’t need her anymore and the thought is almost too terrible to contemplate. She tries to keep it buried as deep as she can.

“At least you’ve got two more to baby for a while after JJ gets older,” Maria says. Despite their best attempts, she and Tommy had never successfully brought another child to term. All their hopes for the future were pinned on one child now. They’ve tried their best to keep the boy from realizing that.

“Oh, hey,” Maria suddenly says, breaking the lull that had settled onto the kitchen table, “I have something for you.”

She digs into her pocket and pulls out a coin. “Here. For watching Matt while Tommy and me were out of town.”

Ellie takes the coin but offers a verbal rebuff as good manners demand. “It was just for three days. You don’t owe me a whole dollar for it, Maria.”

“Two dollars,” Maria replies, pointing to the stamped chit in Ellie’s hand.

Ellie flips the coin over, sees the mis-stamped roman numerals on the front. “Oh hey! The Double Dollar! Man, I haven’t seen this thing in years! I was sixteen when I got this the first time. The night of my birthday party.”

“Luckiest coin in Jackson,” Maria winks.

Ellie grins at Maria. “You might say I got _very lucky_ that night.”

Maria laughs.

“God,” Ellie says smiling wistfully. “Laurie gave this to me… Man… She’s been gone… what? Four years now?”

“Sounds about right, yeah.” Maria watches a glum expression steal across the younger woman’s face.

Laurie Engdahl had been Ellie’s best friend. She was nearly the same age as Ellie and one of the few teenagers in town that could relate to the world-weary girl when she’d first arrived in Jackson after her long, difficult trip from Boston. Laurie and her extended family had been the only Mormons in Jackson, but were settled in quite nicely, eventually becoming pillars of the community. But a few years back, they had learned about another Mormon community through scouts from the great tribe over in Wind River, who had been told of the Mormons by a trading party from another, smaller tribe living somewhere in Kansas – Tommy swore that the scattered bands of native American and their intricate network of communication was better than all the short wave stations in the country. After a big farewell party, the Engdahl’s had left Jackson and made the long, dangerous journey south to Exalted Hills, a hidden community somewhere in Oklahoma.

“Laurie’s second wife to a big rancher, last I heard from her,” Ellie says, her voice faraway. “I don’t know why one man needs so many wives, but I hope she’s doing okay.”

“One way to find out,” Maria says, pulling a battered letter from her back pocket. She hands it to Ellie, who brightens at once. “Scouts from Wind River were bringing this into town. Tommy and me were showing Matty how to patrol the inside fences of the cow pastures when we saw them riding up. They knew I knew you, so they gave me the letter and asked me to pass it on. They still call me ‘mayor.’ I can’t get them to stop doing that.”

Ellie beams, barely hearing her friend, emerald eyes scanning the wrinkled letter.

         FROM:  
         Mrs. Lamar Jensen  
         c/o Chief Three Smoke Eagles  
         Bahkhoje Tribe

         TO: Eleanor BW Miller  
         c/o Chief Spirit Cloud  
         Wind River Tribes

“I gotta ask,” Maria say, “Why Eleanor ‘BW’ Miller? I thought your middle name was Suzanne.”

“BW stands for Bookworm. It’s her nickname for me,” Ellie replies, not looking up from the letter. The date written in neat little handwriting on the back told her that this letter had been sent from Oklahoma almost three weeks ago. All things considered, this letter had made pretty good time to get to her so quickly. The first few letters she and Laurie had sent back and forth had taken months to make the trip. Long distance communication was getting better, especially as they established trade with the various Indian tribes beyond Wind River. “I’d rather her just write ‘Bookworm’ on the envelope than ‘Eleanor.’ Yeesh. Why couldn’t mom have just named me Ellie and saved me the embarrassment?”

“Open it,” Maria urges, almost as curious about the contents of the letter as Ellie is.

“Later,” Ellie says, tucking it away. “After the kids are in bed. I really want to take my time with it.”

Maria nods. “I can understand that. When you do, let me know how she’s doing.”

“I will. Anyway, I’ll get you some change,” Ellie says. “Two dollars is too much for babysitting.”

“Don’t you dare,” Maria warns, waggling her finger at Ellie. “Now that Matty’s thirteen, he can watch himself. I won’t be paying you for sitting him anymore. So think of that as severance pay, okay? I’m sorry, Eleanor, but I’m going to have to let you go. Good luck at your next job. Feel free to list me as a reference on your resume.”

Ellie laughs a little and doesn’t put up a fight. She’s going to miss the extra money that babysitting Matthew brought in.

“Wanna stay for dinner?” she asks. “It’s the least I can do. I’m making Ellie’s World Famous Taco Rolls.”

“Mmm. Tacos.”

“I’ve got fresh sugar cookies for dessert.”

“Ooh! Shelly Hammond’s recipe?”

“Yep.”

“God, that woman could bake!”

“She sure could. I really miss her.”

“Fuck cancer,” Maria whispers, checking to make sure the back door is closed and the kids didn’t hear her.

“Yeah,” Ellie agrees. “So whaddya say? Dinner with the in-laws tonight?”

**. . .**

  
The kitchen table is crowded in the best way. Eight people packed into a space that is designed for six. Plates clatter. Flatware scrapes. Glass clinks. Everyone is talking. Gun belts are safely stowed in the hall closet. Boots are waiting in the living room by the door. There are rules in this house. No shoes indoors is one. Eat until you’re full is another.

The tacos wouldn’t be recognizable as such to people from thirty years ago, but the beef is as savory as local spices can make it and the corn tortillas are fresh. Sprinkled with peppers, onions, shredded lettuce, basil, chives, tiny wedges of cherry tomatoes, a generous sprinkling of tangy, crumbled goat cheese, a dollop of sour cream, and a zesty hot sauce made locally, the little yellow bundles are delicious. Ellie and Maria, with the help of Teresa (who never seems to mind helping in the kitchen when Aunt Maria is around) and Laura (who mostly provided moral support) have assembled seventeen of the things. The girls each get one. The women get two. The men get three. JJ and Matthew each get two and a half. Simmered, peppered beans made for a filling side dish. Everyone has milk. Joel and Tommy drink buttermilk. JJ, trying to be like his father, has a glass of the thick stuff too, though he struggles to drink all of it. Matthew, more sensibly, drinks regular milk. He doesn’t need to aspire to manliness like the younger JJ. Matthew is shaving now, after all. That is all the proof of manliness he needs.

In no time at all, all the plates are clean, even Laura’s, though she takes the longest to finish her meal, like always. There is nothing left of the sugar cookies but a few crumbs.

“Goddamn, Ellie. That was fantastic!” Tommy says, leaning back in his chair.

“Language,” Maria rebukes gently but firmly.

Tommy chuckles but doesn’t take the words back. Joel chews on a toothpick, smiles crookedly, and says nothing.

“Goddamn, it sure was,” Matthew agrees, testing the waters of his burgeoning semi-adulthood.

“Not too big for me to whip you, son,” Maria warns, less gently this time.

“Sorry,” Matthew says under his breath, not seeing how Tommy and Joel exchange a quick, shared sly smile.

The girls watch intently, waiting to see if somebody is about to get a whipping, but no such punishment is forthcoming. Laura is relieved. Teresa is vaguely disappointed.

“You kids go play in the living room, okay?” Ellie says. “Time for grown up talk now.”

The girls leave. At eight and six, there is no doubt in their mind that they are kids. JJ gets up to go, but stops, checking to see if Matthew is going to join them. The older boy doesn’t move. He remains in his seat, next to his father.

“Go on,” Ellie says to her ten-year-old boy.

“But –“ JJ begins to protest.

“Go on,” Joel says, his tone allowing for no dissent. “Keep an eye on your sisters. Lord knows what they’ll get up to if you don’t keep ‘em in line.”

JJ is only a little mollified by this. He goes, but he clearly does not want to.

Matthew gives his father a quick, questioning look. Tommy nods in way that tells the boy that he can stay. Matthew may not be sixteen yet, but he’s old enough now that more and more is being expected of him. Small moments like this are his reward.

Ellie gathers up the dishes. Maria helps. Tommy and Joel remain seated. This is their only day off, and nothing short of a bandit attack is going to get them out of their chairs after a dinner like this one.

“Went down at the mill yesterday evening to buy a chunk of scrap wood,” Tommy says. “Thinkin’ about havin’ another go at woodcarvin’. But Phelps told me you bought up just about all his scrap.”

“Yeah,” Joel answers. “It’s cheaper than the firewood he sells.”

Tommy nods. “Harder to split too.”

“Yeah, well,” Joel shrugs, “saves me a few bucks.”

Ellie pipes in, “Every day after work, he hauled a bunch of it home. Don’t know how his back didn’t snap in half.”

Joel rumbles a pleasant laugh. “Yeah, that shit’s heavy, that’s for sure. But me and JJ got it all split and piled up this mornin’. In another week or two, I’ll buy more from Brad, once he’s got some to sell again. Then me and the boy’ll split that too.”

Matthew is puzzled. Seems like his uncle is making a lot of work for himself. “Why don’t you just buy the regular firewood? Lot easier that way, Uncle Joel.”

“Matty –“ Maria starts to say.

“I mean, that’s what dad does. Saves time, right?” Matthew continues, obliviously to the invisible signal his mother is trying to broadcast to him with her secret mom powers.

“My big brother always likes to go the extra mile,” Tommy says, glossing over the issue. There’s no need to point out the fact that he has a lot more money than Joel does. While Joel was working as a successful smuggler in Boston, Tommy was here, working hard and stockpiling money. Maria brought her own fortune to the marriage. Ellie never had anything until she moved here, and Joel left a pile of ration tickets in Boston when he was forced to hit the road. Not that his stash would have been worth anything but toilet paper in Jackson. In the ten years since Joel and Ellie have lived here, they’ve done well for themselves, but even a carpenter’s pay is stretched thin by the demands of keeping a big family fed and clothed. Ellie’s family demands most of her time now. She hasn’t worked a paying job in years. Other than the occasional extra duty in the guard tower when she can squeeze it into her schedule, she doesn’t bring any money into the house.

“Everything the hard way with this guy,” Ellie says, leaning in, her arms around Joel’s neck, and gives him a quick kiss, bringing a smile to his lips.

“He’s just showing off, if you ask me,” Maria says, doing her part to smooth things over. Her teenaged son lacks tact, a common failing among his kind.

Matthew doesn’t quite get it, but he senses enough to know he should drop the subject. He watches his Aunt Ellie plop down into the chair next to his uncle and wisely chooses to say nothing more on the subject.

From the living room, Ellie can hear the sounds of kids playing Teresa’s new favorite game, ‘rocketship,’ visiting other worlds (apparently worlds where the floor is lava), and blasting invisible aliens and a colorful toy robot with plastic guns. It sounds so incredibly normal to Ellie. Only in the last few years of her life has she begun to understand what normal is, and how much of her own life wasn’t anything close to normal until recently. She smiles and sees her reflection in the mug of rich brown chicory.

It was just like Dr. Copper had explained to her way back in the early days of his experiments to find a cure, before his big breakthrough, before he had found a successful vaccine with the help of old Dr. Swanwick. It had been just a year or two before Copper killed himself after apparently deciding he had nothing more left in the life that required his attention.

Ellie remembered the words that had stayed with her ever since. It had been just another day in his office, sitting on the examination table while he drew her blood, when she had asked him how a cure could possibly save a world so broken.

One drop at a time, he’d said.

What do you mean, she’d asked.

When I was… hiding… in Casper, he’d said, hesitating a bit, like he always did whenever he spoke about his past. Every winter there, I had to melt snow to have drinking water. I’d set out a big plastic bowl – orange and black Halloween candy bowl, I think it was, witches and ghosts, stuff like that – and I’d take a plastic shopping bag and fill it with snow. I’d make a small hole in the bottom of the bag and hang it directly over the bowl with some string. The room I was staying in was just warm enough to melt the snow. Barely. The snow didn’t want to melt, but physics can’t be denied. Eventually, that first drip would land in the bowl with a nice plop. And I would always smile. That first drop was my victory over winter. Drop by drop, that ice would melt. And ice melts faster if you keep the melted water away from it. So each drop that fell meant the ice would melt even faster. Drop by drop, the bowl filled up until the ice was all gone and the bowl was full of water. Ice kills. Water is life. By being smarter than the ice, I got the water I needed. Fungus is stupid, Ellie. Stupid but persistent. We have to be patient. But drop by drop, just as I got the water from the ice, little by little we’ll get the world back from Cordyceps. Right now, it’s just you. Pretty soon, it will be a few people in Jackson. Then it will be all of us. And then the people in Wind River too. Then Sarlida and Woods Crossing. And Hailey after that. Pretty soon, all of Idaho and Wyoming. Then the rest of the country. Then the world. It’s just like that bowl of water. After a little while, I couldn’t tell the first drop from all the other drops. And that’s how it will be with this. No single vaccine to hoard. No single person to hold hostage. No single organization. No single price. No single producer. No single source. Dilution. Diffusion. Dispersion. Evolve. Subsume. Spread. Overcome. Win. Drop by drop. Person by person. Town by town. Continent by continent. It will take a long time. It will take lifetimes. But one day, many, many years from now, when we’re all immune to CBI, and the last of the infected finally die off, with no new hosts to infect, CBI will be gone and the only monsters we’ll have to deal with will be other people. But that’s how it’s always been, ever since we came down from the trees. But those are the kind of monsters we can deal with. They’ll always be with us, but they can’t stop progress. They can’t stop _us_ , Ellie.

The words had made Ellie’s head buzz.

Jeez, I hope you’re right, Mark.

I am. We’ll be on top of the food chain again. And we’ll be a better species for all the years we spent on the bottom. We’ll be renewed. We’ll have purpose again. It will be a golden age.

Think we’ll go to outer space and stuff?

Without a doubt. If there was ever a reason for humanity to spread to as many different worlds as possible, we have learned the truth of it the hard way. After what happened to us here on this planet, and faced with the very real fear that we might go extinct were something like it to happen to us again? That will be the push we need to go to the stars, no matter the cost.

Really? The stars? You think so?

Yes, I do. We were headed in that direction before the outbreak, but we were in no hurry. We thought we had all the time in the world. We were wrong, and we know that now. We’ll put the pieces together again and pick up where we left off, and we won’t slow down until we leave this cradle and find a new home. Probably Mars at first, I suspect. Then maybe the moons of Jupiter. After that, who knows? Other star systems. Other galaxies. Until we’ve spread so far out in ever direction that nothing will be able to stop us except entropy itself. Yes, Ellie, we will go to the stars.

That’d be so fucking cool.

It will be. I won’t live to see it. Neither will you, unfortunately. It will take a great many years before we get there. But we _will_ get there. And when we do, we will owe it all to you, Ellie. Your name will never be forgotten.

She had smiled shyly and chewed at her bottom lip. It was an embarrassing thing to hear such praise from an adult you respected. She had tried to make a joke to help her cope.

Think they’ll build a statue of me?

Yes, he’d said in that sincere but fragile way he had. Yes, they will. On every planet they visit.

In her kitchen, surrounded by family, Ellie sighs, softly enough to avoid drawing attention. She misses Mark. She wishes he’d talked to her before killing himself. Maybe she could have talked him out of it. Maybe. Or maybe not. Sometimes you just get too tired to go on. Dying’s not always the hardest part of life.

She sips her chicory and listens to the children playing in the living room.

Tommy speaks. “Ain’t that a great sound?”

Maria leans against her husband. “So glad they get a chance to play. To be kids, you know? Sometimes, I wasn’t sure there’d ever be a place where that could happen again.”

Joel inhales, settles back, rests his hand on Ellie’s knee while he breathes out. “I know. Does kind of warm the heart a bit, don’t it?”

Seated beside him, Ellie rests her head on her husband’s shoulder. “Getting soft on me, old man?”

He chuckles, just a bit derisively.

For lunch, she had served up sandwiches made with chokecherry jam, a local treat. Hidden in the high cabinet above the stove was a bottle of something she’d bought at the same time she’d bought the jam.

Chokecherry Liqueur. A pain in the ass to make. Took forever to squeeze all the juice out of those little berries, but damn did they help a mom unwind after a particularly stressful day. Money could be tight sometimes, but it was worth the price. Andy Givener always tried to keep a bottle or two in reserve for the frazzled young moms in town.

Ellie gets up, pulls out her footstool from the little pantry closet, takes the hidden bottle of wine out. She pours a small glass for Maria and herself. The men are more than happy with the tall, cold bottles of beer she produces from the fridge. Wine is for the womenfolk, as Joel likes to say. Momma’s Special Nerve Medicine, Tommy calls it.

Everyone sips their drinks. The sun will soon be going down. Conversation is light and breezy, like the weather outside.

Tommy passes his beer to his son once or twice, letting the boy take a few sips. Matthew can’t hide the dreadful look on his face, but he pretends as hard as he can that he likes it.

“Shootin’ contest in a few weeks,” Tommy announces to no one in particular. “Twenty dollar prize this year. Ten bucks for second place. Five bucks for third. Want me to sign you two up?”

“Sure,” says Joel. He always does well at these competitions. He has killed more men than almost anyone else in Jackson. Shooting at paper targets and old cans is nothing compared to that. The annual ‘Jackson Shootout’ is almost free money for him.

“How about you, Ellie?” Tommy asks.

“I’d like to…” Ellie murmurs, thinking about the sign up fee for the contest (a dollar each for Joel and herself), and the cost of hiring a babysitter for most of a day (ten cents, maybe a little more).

“I’ll watch the kids. No charge,” Maria says, adding with a wink, “but I might help myself to a an eggplant or two while I’m here.”

Ellie smiles and nods. “Deal.”

“You’re a better shot than I am anyway,” Maria says warmly.

“Heck, I’m a better shot than Joel is,” Ellie snarks. She’d beaten him a few times in that contest. Not every time, but often enough to tease him about it.

“Hey now –“ Joel begins.

Laura pokes her head inside the kitchen. “Momma, can we color?”

“Sure. But you’d –“ Ellie says, her overjoyed daughter is already dashing to the toy box upstairs and the big box of crayons stuffed inside, forcing her to shout, “– BETTER NOT DRAW ON THE WALLS!”

“SHOUTING IS RUDE!” Teresa hollers from the other room.

“Damn that smartass kid,” Ellie chuckle-grumbles.

“She gets that from her momma,” Joel tells Tommy and Maria with a sad shake of his head.

”Oh, shush.” Ellie works her elbow into his ribs for good measure. “I was a perfect angel until I met you.”

“He corrupted you? Is that what happened?” Maria asks, finishing the last of her wine.

“Yes! And he’s still doing it. You wouldn’t believe the things he does to me once the kids are asleep.”

Everyone laughs. Ellie can feel Joel’s eyes on her again. She’s felt him watching her on and off all day. She knows her husband, knows what’s on his mind. The kids are going to bed on time tonight, she decides. No dawdling. No excuses. Momma needs more than a glass of wine tonight.

“Sign us up,” she tells Tommy, trying to steer the conversation back to where it was earlier. “I gotta keep my skills up. I haven’t practiced in a month or more.”

“How are the ammo supplies?” Joel asks. “Prices were through the roof last time I tried to buy some bullets. Seems the stock was runnin’ low there for a while.”

“We’re doin’ better now,” Tommy says. “Took a while to build our stocks back up after that mess with those damn bandits. But we’ve chased ‘em out. Or wiped ‘em out.”

Joel nods. “We killed every goddamn one of ‘em, I hope.”

Ellie nods. She’d done her part from one of the towers during the worst of the attacks. She is almost out of ammunition for her hunting rifle as a result.

Tommy takes another pull from his beer. “Whichever way it went, we ain’t run into any trouble of that sort for a year now. Ol’ Parker and the boys at the armory have finally made enough bullets that we figure we can waste a few for the fall festival.”

“Any more supply runs goin’ out anytime soon?” Joel asks, causing a cold lump to appear in the pit of Ellie’s stomach. “I sure could use the extra money.”

“I’ll talk to Lonny,” Maria says. “See what our mayor has planned.”

“Thanks,” Joel says.

Ellie says a silent prayer. They need the money. But she needs her husband more. She hates it every time he leaves the safety of the town walls, even to go to the dam. But scrounging runs are something altogether different. Every year, the search teams have to roam farther and farther out into unknown territory. The towns near Jackson have all been picked clean. The risk gets higher with every run.

JJ appears at the doorway. “Hey, Matt! Wanna listen to some music?”

Matthew nods. Being among the adults is a privilege, but adult conversation is by turns boring and weird. He jumps at the chance to hang out with his younger cousin.

The boys leave the kitchen and go up to JJ’s room. A minute later, loud rock music begins to blare. Andrew WK. Ellie knows every word of the song by heart.

“Shut the door!” Ellie shouts. “Or turn that down!”

The door closes in a near-slam, loud enough to indicate teenage displeasure, but not quite enough to get in trouble.

“Shouting is _ru-ude_ ,” Teresa calls in a sing-song voice.

“Shush!” Ellie responds.

The girls giggle. The adults do too, though careful to keep it low enough so the children don’t hear them.

“Goin’ to the movies tonight. Wanna go with us?” Tommy asks. “Our treat.”

“We can afford to pay our way in, baby brother,” Joel says wearily. All that log splitting has taken a lot out of him. He had considered taking a nap today, after lunch. The allure of a nap calls more and more to him with each passing year. His grandpa had taken a nap every day, which had only made him seem even older to young Joel. Now he was beginning to appreciate his grandfather’s wisdom.

“Oh, it’s the least we can do,” Maria says. “After you fed us dinner and this wine an-“

Tommy gives her knee a quick, telling squeeze. Joel is tired. And with his older brother, tired runs hand in hand with grumpy, and a grumpy Joel was like a bear trap. Anything might set it off.

“Is it still five cents per adult and two pennies per kid?” Ellie asks. She has a jar full of change in her closet. It won’t hurt to spend a little of it.

“Yep,” Tommy says.

“I reckon it wouldn’t break the bank,” Joel shrugs, his sore hands folded in his lap. He gives his wife a look that sends tingles through her. “Wanna go to the movies, Peaches?”

Ellie yawns and smiles and settles her head against him again. “Sure. What’s playing, Tommy?”

“Sunday night. Double feature. First flick is Stargate. Aliens. Pyramids. Laser guns. Good stuff. Then it’s Lionheart,” Tommy says. “Kung fu flick with Van Damme.”

“Oh lord,” Ellie mock laments. “Our kids will be kicking each other in the head for a week.”

“Probably,” Joel says, nonplussed. He calls to the girls in the living room. “Kids! We’re goin’ to the movies tonight!”

“Yay!” they cheer in unison.

“Space monsters and kung fu. Go get cleaned up,” Joel adds. “And tell the boys too.”

The girls run upstairs.

A minute later, Matthew ambles into the kitchen.

“We’re going to the movies?” he asks. JJ is visible in his shadow, sticking close to his cooler, older, taller cousin, hoping some of those traits will rub off on him.

“Yep,” Tommy says.

“Matty,” Maria begins, before quickly correcting herself. “Matthew. Why don’t you take the horses back to the stables before it gets dark. Your daddy and me are pretty worn out. Happens when you get old and decrepit like us, son. Want to help us out?”

“Okay,” the boy says, turning, going to fetch his boots and gun belt. He pauses, twists at the waist to look back at the adults seated around the table. “You coming, dad?”

“I could,” Tommy says, cocking his head. “But I reckon you’re old enough to handle this one by yourself.”

Matthew grins. “Yeah?”

“I reckon. So go on and prove me right,” Tommy nods.

“Can I go with him, dad?” JJ asks.

Joel considers it a moment. The boy is only ten. But he’s already been banished to the kid’s circle once tonight. He studies Matthew, measuring the boy’s maturity.

Joel’s voice is particularly fatherly when he speaks. “Matthew, you think you could show my son the ropes? One of these days he’s gonna have to know how things work down at the stables. Would you let him come along? Show him what to do? Signin’ in the horses and gettin’ ‘em in the corral and such?”

Matthew nods, trying to be an adult. “I sure can, Uncle Joel.”

“Thanks, Matthew,” Joel says. “I owe you one.”

Matthew nods again, one man to another, and places a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “C’mon, JJ. Get your boots. We’re going to the stables.”

“My mom used to work at the stables,” JJ says proudly, already out of sight, his voice carrying in from the other room.

“Two years my wife was a nurse,” Joel says. “Saved Daryl Cooper’s life. Parker’s too, back before he got too old to be sheriff. But that one winter she spent at the stables is still the thing my boy finds most impressive about his mom.”

They laugh. A long moment of contented silence passes before anyone else speaks.

“You left your horses to poop all over my front yard?” Ellie asks.

“Just a little,” Tommy chuckles.

“They’d better be doing their business in my flowerbeds. Anywhere else and I’m gonna put Matty to work shoveling it up,” she sighs.

“Fine by me,” Maria says. “That boy has more energy than I know what to do with.”

Laura suddenly pokes her head into the kitchen, distressed and seeking justice.

“Mom! Teresa won’t share the hairbrush!”

**. . .**

  
They part ways at the front of the town meeting hall. Tommy and Maria live at the other end of town. There are hugs, goodbyes, and then the slowly dispersing crowd ambling along, until the Joel and his family have the last length of the street to themselves, with the stars overhead to light the way. It is after ten. Most of the streetlights are out now.

JJ is spending the night with Tommy. Tomorrow, he’ll take Matthew and JJ up to the north pastures and let them hang out with the Indians who are in town to barter for some cattle. Good experience for the boys, the Miller brothers agree. Teresa is unhappy that she didn’t get to go. In another couple of years, she’ll get her turn. But two years seem like several eternities when you’re young.

The walk back to their house is long. The girls, previously so full of energy, are flagging. Laura especially is worn out. She weaves from side to side, comically, almost drunkenly, on her short, little legs.

Joel scoops her up and carries her.

Ellie smiles, warmed to her very core. For a man she’s watched beat other men to death with wooden planks and rusty mufflers, he’s turned out to be a great dad.

She remembers Joel carrying her one warm afternoon. She had been young and naked and utterly exhausted after being swept away by a rushing river. Time had somehow made a scary day into a good memory. Time was funny that way. She lets her mind drift, remembers how good it felt to be carried, naked and safe, in those big arms.

“Nobody’s carrying _me_ ,” Teresa pouts.

Ellie tousles her hair and the girl smiles up at her mother, her face tired and a little slack.

“Do you remember my friend Laurie?” Ellie asks, knowing a tired girl who is distracted is less likely to be fussy. “She moved away when you were little.”

“I remember her,” Teresa says cautiously. She knows the woman more through her mother’s stories than any actual memories. But she does have a few authentic pictures of Laurie in her mind, though they are the fuzzy, half-formed memories of early childhood. “Blonde hair, right?”

“Big boobs,” Joel says silently, mouthing the words.

Ellie shoots him a “shame on you” look. He chuckles. Teresa doesn’t see what he did, she only senses she missed something important, the kind of stuff that passes between parents like some sort of secret language.

“That’s right,” Ellie says, distracting her again. “I got a letter from her today.”

“Really?” Teresa asks, suddenly very interested. “She’s in… um… Texas?”

“She’s right next door in Oklahoma,” Ellie corrects. “That’s pretty much Texas.”

”The hell it is,” Joel says silently.

Ellie pointedly ignores him. “Aunt Maria brought the letter to me. I’m going to read it later.”

“Will you read it to me?” Teresa asks.

“I sure will,” Ellie says, making Teresa smile in excitement. Letters are a big deal.

“Read it to me too,” Laura mumbles from where her face is pressed against her dad’s neck.

“Or course I will, sugar doodle,” Ellie says. “You’re named for her, you know. What kind of momma would I be if I didn’t read her letter to you?”

Laura tries to giggle. She yawns instead. She’s sound asleep by the time Joel carries up the front steps and into the house.

**. . .**

  
He checks his watch to make sure it still has the same time as the bedroom alarm clock as he takes it off his wrist. Ellie had paid to have it repaired years ago, during her first pregnancy. If he was going to wear a watch, she’d determined, then the silly thing was going to work.

He slides into bed, discretely taking off his boxers beneath the concealment of the bed sheets. Across the room, Ellie, clad in her nightgown, tucks the unopened letter beneath an old, empty, dusty bottle of Elliebrau which sits on the little shelf by her three-piece dresser mirror, where it will stay, safe and unread, until tomorrow.

“Not gonna read it?” Joel asks.

“Tomorrow.” Her voice is nervous. She can hide it from most people, but not from him.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Joel says.

“I hope so. But just in case she isn’t,” Ellie says, “I don’t want to find out right before bedtime. I wouldn’t be able to sleep. And if I did, I’d just have nightmares.”

Joel nods, pretending to understand. Either way, Oklahoma is weeks away from Jackson. If Laurie needs help, it won’t be coming soon. And knowing or not knowing won’t change bad news. Ellie worries. That’s just how she is. He keeps a supportive expression on his face. It’s the safe and smart thing to do this close to bedtime.

She takes a deep, calming breath. So much of the world is beyond her control. She wanted to save everyone on planet earth when she was younger. She sees now how foolish that was. No one can save everyone. All she can do is focus her efforts on this town, and this house, and this family. She breathes deeply, letting the stress of the day melt away. She envies her children and this brief, carefree time of their lives. It won’t last. Nothing does.

He lies in bed, watching her as she stands by the dresser across the room, letting her long hair down, undressing for bed. He’s still strong, still powerful, but he’s getting a bit of a paunch despite his best efforts and more situps than a man his age ought to do in the morning. All their kids have taken their toll on her figure as well. She’s neither as trim, nor as taut as she once was. But to his eyes, she’s as sexy as she’s ever been. She loves him for that. He’s in the mood. She can see it in his eyes. At his age, he’s not as ready to romp at the drop of a hat the way he used to be. Once a week is his average these days, maybe twice if he’s feeling particularly frisky. She wishes it were more often, but with all their kids and their homework and her housework and him acting as secondary supervisor for most of the construction work going on around town, once a week is about all they can find the time for. When the kids get a little older, and she goes back to work as a nurse in the town hospital, there will be even less time. Maybe in another year or two. Every time she sees her, Dr. Corinne asks her when she’s coming back to the hospital. After a few months as a stable hand, once the tests with Dr. Swanwick proved conclusively that a cure had been found, everyone in town eventually got the vaccination. After that, since everyone was technically infected, no one minded Ellie working as a nurse. Technically speaking, she’d had almost as much formal training as Corinne, and it had been a great time for the teenaged girl, but then she’d gotten pregnant. And being a mom had taken up all her time since. Other than the occasional crisis, like the bandit attacks last year that left a bullet or two in nearly half the townsfolk, Ellie didn’t get many opportunities to work as a nurse. But it paid well, and they needed the money, and if she worked at least half the week, that would pay for a baby sitter. But she didn’t like the idea of leaving her children alone that much and just the thought of it made her heart ache and -

Joel’s voice thankfully pulled her out of her endlessly looping worry.

“Hope none of the kids have a bad dream tonight. This would be a bad time for a little hand to come knockin’ at the bedroom door, yeah?”

“Don’t worry about that. They’re sound asleep. Teresa zonked out as soon as her head hit the pillow and I’m pretty sure Laura was already dreaming before you brought her home. We’re all alone. In fact, you know what? The kids aren’t here, Joel.” She slips her robe off and stands there by the dresser mirror, in nothing but her panties, feeling incredibly sexy. He still has that effect on her.

“They’re not? Did they finally move out and get a job? Thank you, Jesus. It’s about damn time.”

She giggles, and then focuses. Seduction should be done right or not at all. She comes closer, one slow, sultry step at a time. She usually tells a few bedtime stories every night, and she’s even though her kids didn’t need one tonight, she’s still in a storytelling mood.

She turns the little knob on the electric lamp and darkness fills the room.

“Nope,” she says in her best sexy purr. “We’re not even in Jackson. We’re in Ohio, in that Motel 6. Remember the one?”

His eyes glimmer in the low light of the stars outside the window. His smile is crooked and sexy as hell to his wife. “Hell yes, I do. We were both drunk. I was high on painkillers. Somebody doped me up.”

“I wanted to crawl in that bed with you so bad that night. Did you know that?”

“You did? God, it’s a good thing you didn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to keep my hands off you.”

“Hah! You lie, Joel.” She stands by the bed, hands on her hips, breasts bare, head cocked, challenging him.

“No, I’m not. I’m serious, Red. Those drugs you gave me had my mind in a muddle. I couldn’t think straight, I was so horny. You were so damn hot, Ellie. I wanted to fuck you so damn bad. You don’t even know how much, girl.”

“Oh yeah?”

He reaches over, begins to slide her panties down while she stands there.

“Hell, yes. I was just like I am right now, hard as a rock, and you were asking me for a bedtime story and all I wanted to do was pull you into that bed and screw your brains out.”

“Joel!” she squeals happily. “You pervert! I was _fourteen_! I didn’t even have tits yet!”

She steps out of her underwear. She wishes her tummy were as smooth and tight as it used to be.

“I didn’t care! I wanted you! You were turning me on! Just like you’re doing now.”

The mattress dips as she rests her hand on it. She leans in close to his ear, her long hair draping over his face.

She makes her voice high, soft, very young. “This motel is kind of spooky, Joel. I’m scared. Can I sleep with you? Will you tell me a bedtime story? Pretty please?”

“Sure. C’mere, kid…”

She trembles beautifully, an inexperienced virgin, nervous of what was about to happen next. Her voice is high, with just the right amount of fear and desire. She should have been an actress, he thinks.

“Oh, God. What are you doing, Joel? I just wanted you to hold me. I don’t know if I’m ready for this. I’m just a kid. We better not.”

“You’re ready for this, little girl. I know you are.” His tone tells her that he isn’t going to take no for an answer.

She pants breathlessly; afraid and filled with lust she can only barely understand at her tender age. “Please! Oh! I’m too young, Joel. I’m just fourteen. I’m a virgin. God, why does this feel so good? No one’s ever touched me down there before. Oh!”

She is wet and ready. He pushes her thighs open, climbs on top of her, begins to slide himself in.

“Oh no… what are you doing, Joel? Oh man… Oh wow… What is this… what’s happening… oh man… oh man…”

Outside, the first smattering of raindrops dot the darkened sidewalks of Jackson

**. . .**

  
His breathing is fast. They are both covered in sweat.

He has her ankles over his shoulder, adjusts, brings her legs together for an even tighter fit. He places the soles of her feet on his chest. She groans and curls her toes into his chest hair. The pressure of her thighs squeezed together brings her even greater pleasure. To him, her cunt feels as tight as she had been their first time together. She shivers and moans, stretched by him, filled up. His balls slap against her ass and she clenches the sheets in her fists. The receding waves of an orgasm have left her mind spinning in enchanting circles.

“Oh, God. Please, Joel. Don’t come in my little pussy. Not in my little virgin pussy! Don’t spray your hot come inside me. I’m scared. I’m just a little kid. Oh!”

Joel half grunts and half hisses. “Fuck, Ellie. If you keep talkin’ like that…”

“Please! I’m just a scared little girl, Joel. Don’t come inside me. Please! I’m too young. I’m so little! Oh! But it feels so good… but I’m… We… Oh God! Don’t stop! Joel! Joel!”

“ _Ellie!!_ ”

**. . .**

  
He is still breathing hard, but for a man well north of sixty, he still has an impressive amount of stamina. Judging from what she’s heard from the women married to the older men in town, Ellie knows she had better keep this fact a secret from them. They already have their panties in a twist that he is married to someone so much younger than himself. If they knew that he could still fuck this well…

She smiles, strokes his head. He still has most of his hair too, though it is a mix of light gray and white now. His beard is entirely white. Whenever he wears his red long johns on cold winter mornings she always has to resist making a joke about Santa Claus coming to town. She is a lucky woman. She feels bad for men who have lost their hair and their hard-ons. She is glad her man hasn’t.

She murmurs to him, “Next time we’ll break out the sleeping bag. Put it right down here on the bedroom floor. Take another dirty trip down memory lane. Wanna guess which one?”

His voice is a pleasing rumble. “The first time we slept together to stay warm?”

“Hell yes. How’d you know?”

“You think I’d forget that night? Jesus, girl. I ain’t gone senile yet!”

“Damn, it was so cold. And I was _so horny_ for you, Joel.”

“I know,” he says smugly. “You played with yourself.”

She is shocked, almost speechless. “How… how the hell do you know that?”

“You thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I was playin’ possum.”

In the near-darkness, she hides her face in her hands. It’s an adorably girlish thing for her to do.

“Oh my God,” she mumbles, “this is so embarrassing.”

“I thought it was pretty damn hot, Ellie. I’ve jacked off to that memory more than a few times, I gotta tell you.”

Her own laughter blindsides her. It is high, shrill. She tries to muffle it with her hands. She doesn’t want to wake the kids.

Joel husks into her ear, tantalizingly. “Man’s gotta get through the lonely nights at the dam however he can, I reckon.”

“Damn, Joel!” she squeaks between peals of laughter, trying to stay as quiet as she can. “You dirty bastard! You could have totally had me! Right there in that sleeping bag! I was ready to give it up to you that night! You know that, right?”

“Sure do. Your whole body was burning up. You were squirming, moaning. Must have been a hell of a dream you were having about me.”

“Pfft,” she snorts, trying to regain her composure, wanting to score at least one point in this contest. “I could have been thinking of anyone. You don’t know. Maybe I was thinking about Henry. Or Tess. Or Bill. Bill and his invisible friends.”

He barks a sharp laugh. She clamps her hands over his mouth.

“Shh! Shh, you dirty old man! You wake those kids up and I’ll kick your butt.”

“ _I’m_ the dirty one? No chance of that. That’s what _you_ bring to this partnership, girl.”

“Shh!”

“You said my name that night, Ellie. Twice. Before you woke up.”

“Damn it!” she laughs. “Fuck! I still remember it! I was dreaming that you were fucking me in the sleeping bag! Then I woke up and I was _in the sleeping bag with you_. God! I was so horny. I couldn’t go back to sleep until I… Gah! And you were lying right there while I did it! All this time, I thought I got away with it! That’s been one of my biggest secrets all these years. And you knew! The whole time! Goddamn it, Joel!”

He laughs, pulls her close, slips his hand between her thighs.

“Why doncha tell me more about that dream, Ellie.”

“I’ll save that one for next time, when we’re in the sleeping bag,” she giggles, relaxing against him, his fingers a wonderful, familiar presence. “But I’ll tell you about this other dream I had. Do you remember that creek we camped at? Big Darby, I think it was?”

“Yeah.”

“I had this dream that I went down to the creek to wash up… But you were already there, taking a bath.”

“I hope I invited you to join me.”

“You did.”

“Good. Sounds like something I would do.”

“Mm-hmm. And I took my clothes off. I was very nervous about that part.

“Course you were. I hoped I looked the other way, like the gentleman I am.”

“You did not. Because you’re not a gentleman. You’re a pervert, Joel Miller. And then I stepped down into the water… all naked and stuff… I was so nervous… and you offered to wash my back.”

“Like the gentleman I am.”

“Mmmmmm. That feels so good,” she moans, pressing herself against his big, calloused hand, beginning to squirm. “But I said I wanted to wash your back first…”

“Heh. You dirty little girl.”

“You know me, baby,” she giggles, her voice rising, catching, as his fingers work their old magic on her. She will have to hurry if she is going to finish telling this story before he takes her to the finish line.

**. . .**

  
The rain is falling harder outside. The steady pattering on the roof makes it hard to stay awake.

“Hell of a good story you told me tonight, girl.”

“Thanks. Good to know that I can come up with bedtime stories that don’t involve spaceships and dragons and gnomes and stuff.”

“And don’t forget the fairies. Teresa loves those fairies,” he reminded her.

“Gluh. Fuck those things. She’s lucky I love her sweet little butt so much or every story I told her would end with that enchanted fairy village going up in smoke after a terrible forest fire tore through it.”

He laughs.

“There would be no survivors, Joel. Real heartbreaking stuff. She’d never be right in the head again.”

“The sacrifices we make for our kids, yeah?”

He rubs her soft belly. She sighs, stretches against him, kisses his cheek.

“You want another one, darlin’?”

I know what he means, she thinks to herself, smiling cryptically at her husband. He wants to make me come again, God bless him. But I could ask the same question of him and mean something entirely different. Do you want another kid, Joel? I sure hope so.

“I wouldn’t mind,” she says. “If you and your magic fingers don’t mind spoiling me a little.”

He chuckles, his fingers already working their way south. He is usually firm with the kids, a real ‘no nonsense’ dad, but he likes to spoil his wife rotten. She loves him for it.

**. . .**

  
She stretches languorously against him, her body soft and curvy and sexy. A mom’s body, and one he loves very much. He hugs her tight.

“Night, Ellie.”

“Good night, Joel. I love you, you dirty old man.”

“Love you too, you naughty little girl.”

A pause. There’s an unpleasant thought rattling around the back of her head, the ultimate fate of that woman they left behind all those years before, and she wants to coral it before she falls asleep. That’s the best way to prevent nightmares. Turn the dark thoughts into something good. She’ll need Joel’s help to do it.

“You really should have nailed me when I was fourteen, Joel. The night I asked your drunken, sexy ass for a bedtime story.”

“Damn. Talk about regrets,” he mumbles sleepily. He has a long week ahead of him. “Christ, we’d probably still be livin’ in that Motel 6.”

She brings the disturbing thought into the light, ready to reshape it into something better.

“You, me, and that pretty lady, Tala. Remember her? Pretty asian girl. You’d have to service both of us every night, Joel.”

“God, I’d be dead by now. Fucked to death by two women. But what a way to go, yeah?”

“Yeah. It’d be just me and Tala after that, I guess. Living together in the Motel 6. Lots of girl on girl action going on too, I can promise you that.”

“Oh hell, baby. I’m glad you believe in ghosts, darlin’, because I’d be hauntin’ you two every night, hidin’ under the bed, listenin’ and watchin’, you know?”

She snickers into his ear. “Pervert.”

“Can a ghost touch himself?” he mumbles. “Sweet Jesus, I sure hope so.”

She giggles, wraps her fingers in-between his, and pulls his arm snug around her waist as they spoon together under the warm blankets. The dark thought is gone. She’ll sleep well tonight. Soon he is snoring. The gentle rain continues to fall on the roof of their crowded little home. She wants to fall right to sleep, but her mind is still working through the past. She sighs, wishing she could let stuff go the way her husband does. But that’s not who she is; it’s not who she’s ever been.

She listens to the rain pattering above, feeling warm and loved. She remembers the rain that fell in Boston that night she lost Riley. She remembers the rain splattering against her visor as she rode across Ohio with Joel on Kristi Chau’s red Gold Wing. She remembers the cold, slushy rain that fell on the roof of the old Sunco station in Glenwood Springs, when the spring thaw came and she woke Joel up in the middle of the moonless night with her broken wailing, the nightmare of David and the steakhouse and the flames so fresh in her mind that she could still feel the scabby cut on the bridge of her nose, the bruises from his boots on her cracked, taped-up ribs. Joel held her close and let her sob into his chest until his shirt was soaked with snot and no more tears would come. He sang her to sleep for the first time that night and on many nights after. He still does sometimes. She remembers the snow that fell on the roof above her the night of her sixteenth birthday, the night Joel made love to her for the first time in this room, in this very bed. She remembers the dew on the hospital windows that early morning that her son was born. She remembers Joel’s tears wet and hot on her cheek as he held her while their little boy nursed from her for the first time. Tomorrow she will tell him that they’re going to have another baby. She remembers how hard her last delivery was. She knows the risk. Corinne told her in explicit detail that she should avoid any further pregnancies. She will finally show Joel her mother’s letter and ask him to help her write one of her own for the child growing in her belly. Just in case. However it turns out, she has no regrets. None at all. You fight for every day of life you have in this world, just like Riley had said. If she could bring one more beautiful, healthy child into this slowly healing world, it would be worth the risk.

She cries softly into the pillow and falls asleep with the big arm of the man she loves snug around her, a smile on her face.

Lying quietly together, both of them sleep deeply. They don’t know how little time they have left together. No one ever does. When winter arrives later that year, Joel will spend too long outside helping to clear the gates of snow. A bad cough will soon follow. It becomes pneumonia. He is bedridden for most of the winter. A very pregnant Ellie tends to him dutifully, praying every day that this is not his time to go, that he won’t leave her and the children. He recovers somewhat, but is never the man he was before. Her second son, Mark Winston is born soon thereafter, in a very difficult birth. Two years later, the winter is especially brutal, and Joel’s pneumonia returns. His lungs are too old, too scared, too worn out. They begin to fail, fill with fluid, drowning him. With only a few days left before the end, his voice weak and shredded by coughing, he wheezingly offers to finally tell her the truth about Salt Lake City but she won’t let him. Some lies are a better comfort than the truth ever could be.

He dies in early February. She stands at his grave. It takes seven of the strongest men in Jackson all day to dig it out of the frozen earth, even after letting two campfires burn all night to soften the ground. The entire town shows up to pay their respects. For all his gruffness, Joel had become a pillar of the community. He helped build or repair half the homes in a town that seems to grow ever larger with each passing year. Their children stand in a small cluster around their mother, some understanding more than others that Daddy isn’t coming back. Tommy and Maria comfort her. The house at the end of the street with its amazing garden and all its numerous expenses are too much for her. A few weeks after the funeral, she moves her family in with her in-laws. Tommy and Maria only ever had the one child and now that Matthew is almost grown and will be soon living with the other bachelors, their house has more rooms than they have ever needed, so they welcome Ellie and her children’s arrival. The extended family fills the place with more love than those walls have ever known before. Some nights she will sleep alone on the couch, or in the bed with her one of her daughters. Most nights, she will share a bed with Tommy and Maria. It is a complicated, tempestuous, wonderful arrangement, and she is loved.

Times passes. Her children grow. She loses JJ in the closing days of the terrible Yellowstone War, a great powder keg of a conflict sparked by a rogue army marching east from California and the collapsed QZs there, killing or subjugating everyone they meet, an army of locusts driving tanks and trucks. Two years they march inland from the sea, across Nevada and Idaho, bringing fire and smoke and blood, moving inexorably east, destroying the neighboring settlements of Hailey and Wood Crossing, until they finally reach the Rocky Mountains and set off a war that lasts all spring between this murderous remnant of FEDRA and the forces of Jackson, Wind River, and ultimately all the allied communities between Exalted Hills, Burlington, and Free Fargo. No one wants this war, but each community knows that they cannot stand against this army alone. Only together can they combine their forces and defeat the soldiers. Coded short wave radio signals go out. Indian scouts carry the word to every community they know. Yellowstone, with Jackson as its heart, becomes the battlefield where all forces converge in a desperate, all-out attempt to stop the powerful army. A thousand die. Hundreds more starve when fields become encampments and crops go unplanted. In the shadow of the great mountains, the conflict destroys nearly every one of the smaller towns west of the mountains and almost destroys Jackson as well before the invading army is surrounded, bogs down, and finally collapses and scatters in a final, awful battle that lasts for three days and nights of continuous fighting. Towns are burned to the ground. Powerful tribes are shattered. Everyone old enough to hold a rifle fights. Ellie becomes a celebrated sniper. The old women in town tend to the children of the fighters. Ellie doesn’t see her children for days or weeks at a time. She kills without remorse. She loses many friends. No family escapes the devastation. Matthew loses an arm to an infected gunshot wound that goes untreated for too long. Joel Junior dies doing his duty as a child soldier, an ammunition carrier, in the one of the last battles of the war when the mighty town wall of besieged Jackson is destroyed by mortar fire, taking Joel’s name with him into the beyond. Burying her child is the hardest thing she has ever done. A light goes out inside her that never quite returns. When the last soldiers try to escape the losing war, they are hunted down and killed mercilessly. They do not know these mountains like the locals. Desperate and on foot, without the protection of their tanks, they have no chance and are slaughtered like animals. By late summer, the final black-uniformed straggler has his throat cut and is left to rot for the crows.

Forever after, the valley below remains littered with mass graves of seven hundred fallen soldiers, and a dozen rusted, burned out tanks and trucks, just like the ones she remembers from the old battlefield in Ohio: an eternal warning to the whole world that Jackson bows to no one.

The war brings distant communities together by necessity. After the last shot is fired, the ties will still remain. Great trade routes will be established. Short wave communications will be sent openly, no longer coded, almost daring the tattered forces of FEDRA still clinging to life along the Atlantic seaboard to do anything about it. Soon large, well-armed envoys will regularly leave Jackson and Wind River, headed across the old highways in every direction, as far away as Fargo, Burlington, Exalted Hills, and Cleveland, Ohio, “The Free QZ”, which will form the great Eastern Bulwark against any further excursions by FEDRA into the interior of America. Jackson will become known as the great Fortress of the West. Survivors will flock there, some from as far away as old, long-hidden shelters in Alberta and Manitoba. The town of Jackson will grow strong. It will become a city a thousand strong. Civilization will begin to claw its way back from the northern wilderness, where hard winters keep cordyceps from claiming the land. Combined forces, regular communication, and well-armed patrols will crush bandits and hunters wherever they are found. Eventually, the last, greatly weakened, and nearly powerless QZs still left standing will petition to join this loose confederation of free cities. FEDRA will die. Democracy will rise again.

Slowly, in the decades before the formation of CanAm, the Canadian-American alliance, life in little Jackson returns to normal. A few years after the war, with Maria’s blessing, Ellie will have her last child, with Tommy. She will name the little boy Bill. It is a joke that only she gets. It is the last joke she will ever tell. The delivery is too hard; she won’t survive it. Struggling to remain awake long enough, she writes a letter to the baby boy and Maria promises she will give it to him when he is old enough. She knows her children are in good hands. She leaves this world on a beautiful spring morning, a few months before she would have turned thirty-four. Even with Copper’s irreplaceable serum cultures destroyed in the war, Ellie’s daughters and granddaughters, and the daughters born to everyone already vaccinated, spread the immunity they carry out into the world, rippling away from the centerpoint of Jackson like drops of melt water falling into a bowl. One new child at a time, one new generation at a time, they take this world back and eventually take her story with them to new worlds, to places she had only dared to dream about, to new cities out amongst the distant stars.

Joel, Tommy, Maria, and the others are eventually forgotten, as most of us are.

Ellie never will be.

 

 

THE END

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, where did the time go? Three years flew right by, didn’t they?
> 
> Anyhoo, here we are at the end of my series. I started this thing for my girlfriend back in 2014. Now she’s my wife and we’re thinking of making a baby later this year, after our big vacation this summer. Freud would probably say that this chapter was my subconscious coming to terms with my upcoming fatherhood. I would say that Michelle absolutely craved the idea of Ellie as a mom. I’d say Freud would say she had motherhood anxiety or something, but the truth is he’d probably diagnosis her with penis envy instead. ;-)
> 
> I’m sure everyone who envisioned a future for Joel and Ellie had their own idea of what fate had in store for them. This is my vision. I’m sure it won’t be a perfect ideal for everyone, but I hope you like it all the same. Personally, I’m a big believer in the human capacity to work together and overcome adversity. Sometimes, in our day to day lives, that might seem like an impossibility, but open any history book and you’ll see that we have a good track record of getting our shit together when we absolutely have to. If there’s an author insert moment in this work, it’s Mark’s notion humanity overcoming CBI and using their near extinction as an object lesson about the importance of moving the human race off world. Neil Druckmann would almost certainly disagree with my take on his story, but that’s the point of fanfic, right?
> 
> Easter Egg notice: The Van Damme movie Lionheart featured Ashley Johnson as a little girl – her very first acting first role!
> 
> Over the course of this series, I tried to take into account a lot of real factors that a man and girl might face in a road trip / survival situation. But a few things had to get nudged aside for the sake of the romance angle. In real life, they’d sleep in shifts. Both of them snoozing at the same time in unknown territory is a sure way to wake up with their throats slit and all of their things stolen. Also, they would worry about their water supply a lot more than they did in my story. Water purification tablets would be hard to come by so many years after the end of the world. In a more realistic take on this scenario, they’d be hauling around a lot of empty water bottles, hoping to find a halfway decent water supply so they could boil as much as they could possibly carry. Streams and rivers aren’t quite as closely spaced as you might think. Also, and most importantly, during the winter chapter, Ellie would put her damn hood up and keep it up. I would tape it to her head if I had to, if I were her guardian. Lastly, denim jeans are a lousy choice if you’re looking to keep warm in the snow. But they look cooler than snow pants, I suppose.
> 
> I also wish I could have spent more time with the other people of Jackson. The format I decided to take for this last volume didn’t leave me much room to indulge my love of character building for anyone but Joel, Ellie, and to a lesser degree, Tommy and Maria. I had all sorts of scenes in my head for Mark, Corinne, Dan, Laurie, and others. At least I was able to sketch them in an interesting fashion, I hope. I hope to do more with them one of these days, but I suppose we’ll have to see what the future holds.
> 
> Looking back on this gigantic labor of love, I can tell you it was a lot of work and a lot of fun. I thank everyone who took some time out of their life to read this monster, and I’m especially grateful to those who went the extra mile and left a comment. Almost all of the feedback was positive and it certainly inspired me to stick with it as months turned into years. Thanks especially to CatrionaMac for providing inspiration and a road map to someone who had never written a fic of any kind before. Thanks, Stu!
> 
> Ultimately, of course, this was all for you, Michelle. Love you, girl. :^*
> 
> R.W. Daniels  
> March 17, 2017


End file.
